A Sunday Afternoon in Córdoba

Sunday morning we had breakfast in our hotel in Seville, and then rode in the coach bus to Córdoba.  I was excited to go, because we had been learning about Córdoba in our Islamic History class.  We had a bit of free time when we arrived, so my friends and I had tapas for an early lunch. (In cities besides Granada, you have to pay for tapas, but they are a bit bigger and you get to choose what you want.)  Then we met up with our group for our walking tour.  First we walked through the Jewish Quarter, which is where the Jewish community lived a long time ago when Spain had a mix of different religions.  Today there are maybe one or two Jewish families living in Córdoba, not enough to qualify as a community.  In order to officially be considered a community, you need to have at least ten men.
 
 
 

After walking through some of the pretty streets, we headed to the main attraction of Córdoba, the Mezquita.  This is the only mosque that is still standing from the time when Muslims had control over this part of Spain (up until 1492).  Others have been built since then of course, though.  The reason this one survived the destruction of the Spanish Inquisition is that it was actually taken over by Christians two hundred years before the Inquisition.  They had already converted it into a cathedral, so they didn't knock it down when they knocked down all of the other Muslim buildings.  This history makes for a really interesting place to visit today.  For the most part, the building has very Arabic architecture.  There are bunches and bunches of arches made of red brick and white limestone (so they kind of look like candy canes.)  You can still see the part where Muslim holy services were said (and it is designed so that if you stand in a certain spot and talk, your voice carries so that everybody can hear you), and then right next to it is this super Catholic room where they have this fancy tabernacle for use during Corpus Christi parades.  Right in the middle of the building is the actual church part of the Cathedral.  It looks just like pretty much any other church, except you are surrounded by all this Muslim architecture.  It is pretty cool.

 
 
 
 

On the bus ride back to Granada, we drove through so many olive groves.  We stopped at a little shop that reminded me of Held's Cheese in Wisconsin, except instead of cheese they sold olive products.  It was crazy busy, but I bought a few bottles of olive oil to take home, because this is the place to get the best olive oil in the world.