Cordoba

Yesterday I went with part of the group to Cordoba for the day. I got up early (too early for a Friday) and met up with the girls at the bus stop to go down to Palacio de Congresos to meet up with the rest of the group to take the 3 hour bus ride to Cordoba. Uneventful ride. We got there and walked across a bridge over the Guadalquiver river into the city. Part of the bridge was built by the romans way back when, pretty cool. We met up with our tour guide for the day and started off by going to the Alcazara which is where the king and queen used to live back when Cordoba was a very important city. The gardens were the best part of that: Then we had free time. Most of the free time I spent in the big plaza of Cordoba (I never remember the names of all these plazas!) under an umbrella eating lunch. It was nice because I got to know three girls outside of my normal group of friends who are quite nice. Two of them speak Spanish fluently because they have one or both parents who are hispanic. So chatting with them was fun. The other girl is extremely quiet. Yesterday was the first time I heard her say something that wasn't in response to a question from someone else. After the free time we visited the Mezquita/Catedral. It is amazing, and has a really interesting history. Quite the mix of cultures. It was originally a basilica built by the visigoths, then the Muslims came to Cordoba and bought the land, knocked down the basilica and built a mosque. They were in a hurry though, and so took columns of all different types from all over the area and re-used them in the mosque. It's pretty cool since in the original mosque there isn't a singe column the same as any other one. They kept expanding it as the city grew though, and the other parts have columns that are the same. It is extremely impressive, the pictures don't do it justice. Then eventually the Catholics took over the city. What's interesting is that they didn't decide to change the mosque at all until 200 years after they came to power. Then they built a cathedral inside the mosque. Actually, built two but one is huge and the other is tiny. I'm Catholic and proud of it, but really I think that building the Cathedral inside the mosque was rather too bad. It looks kind of silly in the middle of the muslim architecture - this big cathedral in a totally different style. Oh well. The mix of different time periods, cultures and religions is pretty interesting at least. Here are some pictures, I wish I'd taken more, but my camera is fickle and I thought it wasn't working during the tour and then when I tried fixing it by taking the batteries out then putting them back in (which worked) I only had a few minutes to go back through and take some quick pictures before we had to go. I'll get some of my friends to share with me eventually. Until then, here are some of mine:

Part of the original Mosque (Mezquita) Part added later on

Mosque dome

Cathedral in the middle of the mosque Cathedral dome