Sorry for the long pause in writing in... my computer battery died and the hotel we are now at in had a converter so we could charge it up. Hopefully it will last the rest of the trip.
Right now we are in Granada, last post we were in Seville. It's about 4pm here and very hot so I came back to the hotel to write in and Chris is braving the heat and out wandering.
When we were in Seville, we toured the Cathedral, 3rd largest in Europe behind St Peters in Rome #1 and St. Paul's in London #2. Which housed I think I said before Christopher Columbus's tomb. Then there were the many chapel's inside as well as the treasury which included spains most valuable crown some 11,000 jewels but somehow we couldn't find it and think maybe it wasn't on display. Then Chris climbed the bell tower while I waited down below. It was too long and hot of a climb for me. While he was up there the bells went off and as you can imagine spooked him pretty good. We then headed over to the Alcazar or "Royal palace". This had the usual king and queen's apartments but built in Moorish style. It had several courtyards, pools and fountains. It was also here that Christopher Columbus reported back to Queen Isabel about his journeys to the new world. Late that afternoon we headed out on the road north to a town called Cordoba.
We arrived in the early evening. most everything was closed so we wandered around the town and got dinner at a pizzeria. Unfortunately it was the worst Italian we ever had. Even Prego in a jar was more authentic then what we had. Oh well... Thursday morning we got up and toured the Mezquita which was first a Christian church then it was "Mosque-ized" under the control of the North
African Moor's then turned in a cathedral following the Reconquista of the 1400's. Most of it still looked like a mosque except for the christian chapel built in the middle of it with it's choir seats and pulpit. The Islamic carvings throughout were amazing and there were horseshoe archways all over.
We then quickly toured a small 1 room Synagogue from the early 1500's before heading out. 5 miles outside of town is an excavation site called the Madinat al-Zahra. Once a palace from 929 A.D. it's been partially excavated over the last 100 years. Right now it's only 10% uncovered. It's like a Moorish Pompeii... It was hard to navigate as it is mostly a maze of foundations and a few arches here and there.
We then got back in the car and drove to a small hill town called Arcos.
About a 2 hour drive south Arcos is tiny with 40,000 people in the main town and like 13 in the old town section. It had very narrow streets which made for some tense navigating. We meandered our way up the 1 way donkey cart roads with the car mirrors folded in to prevent scraping. Thankfully the streets are for the most part one-way since they are really barely wide enough for a scooter much less a car and definitely not two cars going in opposite directions. The walls of all the buildings wear the scars of many an encounter with vehicles of all types from the past several decades. Our hotel was perched on top of the hill on a cliff. We are staying at one of the historic Parador's here which is a goverment project to turn old historic buildings into hotel's. This one was once a former palace of a govenor. It's cool and all until our guide book tells of a time about ten years ago that a room in the hotel full on fell off into the gorge. Not the news you want as you eat breakfast in their restaurant with a "view" of the gorge that's a mere 15 feet away out these mondo picture windows. Needless to say I was looking for cracks in the tile floor as we ate... We took the town tour around sunset, saw the church and a few streets as that is all there is to see and took in the views. We found dinner at a local restaurant serving lots of "game" meats. Luckily they had cow meat so we naturally chose that over the fowl, deer and other critters I didn't even know you could eat.
Friday morning we headed out again for another hill town called Ronda. It was only about an hour away. Again we stayed at a parador hotel which was perched on top of a gorge with great views of the steep canyon below. This hotel is however just a new modern structure and not a historic palace. It was very nice though, one of our nicest hotels yet and I got a great rate on it for being under 30 :). This hotel also had a pool which was cool as it gave us a break from the heat. When we first arrived we toured the bull ring which is the oldest in Spain. It's still used today but they only have bull fights during the festival times. We then walked through the old town to get nice and hot then went back to the hotel and jumped in the pool and relaxed for a few hours. That evening we went out again and toured the cathedral and a small moorish palace.
Friday morning Chris jumped in the pool again before we had to check out we then headed on to Granada about another 2 hour drive east.
More later, perhaps sooner than you think.
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