Cordoba

While we were staying in Sevilla, we took a day trip up to Cordoba, which is only a 40-minute ride northeast on the high-speed AVE train. The train was very nice--much nicer than the Amtrak trains in the US, and much, much faster. They even show movies!

We arrived at 9:30 a.m. and took a cab directly to the Mezquita, because we knew that entry was free before 10:00 a.m. (saving us 12 Euros). The Mezquita is one of the most unusual buildings I have ever been in--it was built as a mosque, but during the Reconquista, a cathedral was added right in the middle of it, and the two parts don't blend at all. The mosque portion is very beautiful--a wide expansive room with seemingly endless rows of columns and double arches. The cathedral is smaller than the others we saw in Spain, but it was still impressive.

It is free before 10:00 a.m., because they hold a daily morning mass there and wouldn't want to charge parishoners. So services were going on when we arrived, which was also strange, because you really don't see the cathedral part until you are right next to it--when you are in the mosque part, you forget that there is a cathedral there, except for the voices and music being played over the speakers. It is such a unique space--I am so glad that we went there and got to experience it.

We then went to the old Jewish quarter of the city and toured a restored sinagoga (synagogue). We read there that only three sinagogas from before the Reconquista still exist in Spain--one in Cordoba and two in Toledo. All of the others were destroyed. And because we got there early, we were the only tourists there. Later that day when we walked past it again, it was packed full of tour groups! We saw more tourists in Cordoba than just about anywhere else we went in Spain.

We also found the statue of Maimonides, the famous Jewish scholar who was born in Cordoba in the Middle Ages, when Cordoba was one of the largest cities in the world and the center of learning and study in all of Europe. According to the sign, it is good luck to rub his foot, so that is why I'm in that pose in the first picture.

Here are some of our favorite pictures from Cordoba. You can see more in our Picasa album.

The courtyard of the Mezquita Bridge over the river Guadalquivir

Inside the sinagoga Hebrew script

And of course, M striking the same pose. :)