Cordoba Saturday, April 9

Saturday, April 9

Oops, forgot to publish this blog.  Mentally place it between Cordoba and Zuheros and Granada.

Today Leo ran a trail race from a sports arena near our campsite out into the countryside and up into the mountains.  He was the only non-Spaniard and probably the oldest person in the race.  The Spaniards do these things differently, the race didn't start till 11 o'clock.

Meanwhile, Janet and I walked through Cordoba's many narrow streets and plazas and checked out a few recommended restaurants and cafes.  Our main event was the Palacios de las vianas, with its 12 courtyard gardens.  You could tour the mansion, but we chose to visit just the gardens, which gave us enough of a peek at the mansion.

The city was full of locals today, many of them celebrating stags and stagettes.  We followed a group of older folks (our age) up a narrow street, after wining and dining, they broke into song, pretty good singers too.

Janet admires one of Cordoba's many impressive iglesias, recently restored, but closed today.

Cordoba and Zuheros

Our first day in Cordoba we visited the Mesquite a huge former mosque built on Roman and Visigoth ruins, then taken over by the Christians who built a Catholic church inside the massive mosque. 



The building is filled with double candystriped arches in every direction, it's quite amazing.

The mesquite lies within the former Jewish district, filled with narrow winding streets and small squares.

We walked across the Guadalquivir River on the old Roman bridge.  The river is very nice, the town walls are set back far enough to allow a natural riparian area, and it's filled with birds.

On our second day we drove into the mountains to visit the mountain town of Zuheros, with its white houses set against limestone cliffs.  

At the top, is a terrace next to the old castillo.

On to Cordoba

It was still raining when we woke up, so we breakfasted in the campsite in the warmth of a woodfire.

Our next destination was Cordoba, a three drive away. We crossed a wide agricultural plain; eventually we drove through a series of tunnels underneath the Sierra Morena mountain range, and came to a totally different landscape, rolling hills with nothing but olive groves in every direction.

We detoured to visit the renaissance town of Baeza, and it was quite a change from the severe towns of La Mancha, lots of imposing old buildings



and streets lined with trees, including oranges



and palms.



We spent a few hours wandering down the streets



and wound up on the edge of town, looking down on a slope at a herd of 30 goats and sheep, all clanking their bells.

We dropped into a cafe for pasteles and a chocolade that  really resembled a thin chocolate pudding more than a hot chocolate.

We are now ensconced in our campsite in the Moorish city of Cordoba.  The campsite is pricy and the plot is stingy, but it's worth it because it's sunny and warm here.




Squeezed into our campsite at Camping Brillante, Cordoba

After dark we feasted on bread, cheese, jamon, olives and pickles, a local wine, and caramel wafers for dessert.

Tilting at Windmills

Parque National des Lagunas de Ruidera - Apr 4, 2016
(This blog got out of order, it'supposed to appear between Toledo and Camping in the Rain)

South of Toledo there are five castillos within a few kilometers of each other.  The first was a ruins of an old Moorish fortification sitting on the top of a hill jutting out of the plains.

We could see for miles.

There were 2 enormous griffin vultures souring around it.  Then the bird of the day, a hoopoe, flew by.

We wandered across the countryside, past the other castillos, some of which were on the top of hills and some plunked in the middle of a town.

We stopped for a cafe in Orgaz, hoping for something to eat.  The locals were having a small glass of beer, with a small bowl of tapas, which looked like a garbanzo bean stew, but was listed as containing "calles", one of the few spanish words we recognized as tripe, so we settled for just coffee, which seems to be uniformly delicious throughout Spain, espresso with a generous amount of steaming milk.

Our last stop was in Consuegre, in the middle of Don Quixote country, which featured a reconstructed castle on the top of a hill, surrounded by 9 traditional windmills.

We sneaked in for the menu del dia just before 4 pm, in a back room filled with Spanish families.  There was no printed menu here, but the owner came out with a handwritten list of the day's platos, which we attempted to decipher.  We did fine, I wound up with a very rich potato and tuna salad and lambchops, Leo and Janet with migas, yesterday's bread fried up with ham and garlic (tastes like turkey stuffing) and grilled chicken breast.  Janet and I had wine, he then opened a fresh bottle for us, which made us nervous, would we be charged for the full bottle when we each drank half a glass?  It turned out to be included, Leo was charged the most for his glass of coke, 1.5€ ($2.75), more expensive even than his excellent cafe con leche, 1€ ($1.50).

We are camped at the parque national des lagunas de Ruidera, not anything like a Canadian national park, just a popular vacation area along a string of limestone lakes, full of campsites, hotels, and restaurants, but not very busy on a cool rainy weekend in spring.

Camping in the Rain

        Campsite in parque national des lagunas Ruidera

It started raining at 9 pm the night we arrived and it kept up for 24 hours.  Our enthusiasm for doing anything outdoors evaporated so we decided to drive to the nearest city and pick up some groceries and camping supplies.

We enjoyed our drive through the surrounding countryside, rolling hills with wheatfields and olive groves aND deep red soil.

Bird of the day was the red-legged partridge,

a relative of the chukar, which we can sometimes see in the Cariboo though it comes from the Middle East originally.

 They were numerous and, sizewise, looked like they'd make a tasty dinner.

Toledo

After a splendid buffet breakfast at the Airport Hilton, we left the lap of luxury to battle both the extensive spaghetti network of cloverleafs, roundabouts and off ramps that constitute the outskirts of Madrid and the Spanish drivers who've never heard of the word yield.

Toledo is about an hour's drive south of Madrid.  After setting up our tents in the Camping El Greco, we walked into the walled hilltop city of Toledo, stopping at the Puento San Martin for the menu del dia, consisting of 2 plates, all the wine we could drink, water, bread and dessert, for 12 euros ($18 Canadian) each, a great deal after our last trip to Scandinavia last summer.  

We're solving the challenge of the Spanish habit of dining late by slipping into a restaurant just before they close at 4 pm for a large lunch, then skipping dinner, which starts at 8 p.m., and having bread and cheese in our campsite.

Crossing the Tags River at the Puente San Martin

We spent two days walking the narrow streets and checking out some of the eleven churches, some of which were built over the ruins of the Romans, Moors, and Jews that preceded them, and taking in the vie of the surrounding plains.

One of the Puertos (gates) into the walled city

Our campsite was right on the river and had a great view of old Toledo, as well as of the local waterfowl.  But we saw the bird of the day, little bittern, while crossing the bridge coming back from the old city.

The ornate entrance to the main Catedral

Bienvenidos a Madrid

We're in Spain!  After 18 hours of flying and waiting for connecting flights, we landed in Madrid in the late afternoon right on schedule, and our friend Janet was waiting for us as planned.

Cleverly, we'd booked the Airport Hilton with Airmiles (practically free to us) to avoid having to drive in busy traffic straight off the plane.

Then, in the typical post-long, exhausting flight fashion we've gotten used to, we drove past the Airport Hilton multiple times trying to find the exit ramp, despite having a gps, eventually having to return to the airport info centre for the correct directions, after which it took us 5 minutes to get to the hotel without even getting on the motorway.

This Hilton is pretty fancy by our standards, with a large bathroom encased in smoked glass complete with a preposterously impractical clear glass sink, and a separate shower and soaker tub.  With its discreet blue (inadequate) lighting, it glows in the darkened room.

After only a few jet-lagged hours of sleep, I've hauled myself down to the lobby in the early hours of the morning to update this blog while the others sleep.

View from Airport Hilton

Today after some time to organize and decompress, we head south to Toledo.