We HEART booking.com Spain Day 8

We woke up early of course to catch our early train to Cordoba. We were excited because we knew our hotel was going to be pretty nice. Once in Cordoba we got a taxi to take us to our hotel (we gave up on trying to find hotels on our own AND we were never able to use the internet to print off more maps). We were so excited when the taxi pulled up RIGHT NEXT to the Mezquita and our hotel was on the other side of the street. We were even MORE EXCITED when we got to our room and it was a SUITE!!! When we got to the room and saw the regular nightly rate we couldn't believe it. The room regularly went for 380 euros and we got it for 40 euors! What a steal!

Wall of Mezquita on the right. Hotel on the left

The suite. It doesn't look that nice in this picture but I promise you it was VERY NICE even for American standards.

Once we checked in we decided to grab an early lunch. We headed to a nice cafe where (I believe) we both had potato omelet sandwiches. A bit weird but good none the less. Next we headed to the Mezquita.

Danny inside the Mezquita

Cordoba's big attraction is the Mezquita which is a Islamic Mosque (AD 784) turned Christian Church. It maintains much of its mosque architecture. The catholic church's guide was really interesting. It contained all sorts of statements such as ,"The Mezquita is only in its current condition because of the Catholic church so don't feel sympathy for the Moors who were conquered and lost their church." It was all kinda strange and a bit funny.

The Mihrab aka Islamic high altar

The Christian high altar

The bell tower

The wall

Next we crossed the street to tour the Alcazar where to my horror we discovered it was closing (closed at 2:30 and it was 2:25 so they weren't going to let us in). I was very upset. This fortress castle had been given to the church by the Catholic Monarchs as a headquarter for the Spanish Inquisition...coolio. I was very sad. We now had nothing else to do in Cordoba.

The Alcazar

Me and the dirty Guadalquivir river

We decided to walk around and try to find this modern day Arabic bath place which we did finally find but it was really expensive. I still wish we would have done it. It looked pretty cool. So we just walked around forever. We got Danny some more eye drops. We walked through the Jewish quarter. I can't even remember where we had dinner. I know we have some ice cream at some point. Finally we began to walk back to our hotel and about 30 feet from the door of our hotel a man tried to steal a girl's camera. It was all very exciting. A kind tourist ran the thief down and got the camera. It was the second time we had witnessed a mugging in Spain.

We went to bed a little nervous because our train the next day was one that required advanced reservations and we didn't have reservations. We were hoping to just show up and buy tickets. I felt a little stupid about Cordoba because although our hotel was totally awesome and a great deal, we spent a lot of money to make the stop for basically one site. Oh well. It was still fun.