Weekend in Andalucia...part I

tower in the middle of the Mezquita's beautiful courtyard
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We met at the Atocha train station at 8 am, bright and early to catch our bus. Luckily we were on a nice, comfortable charter bus, one for our entire program of 60 something students. I slept for the first half but we stopped in La Mancha, a region south of Spain, to get mediocre sandwiches at a roadside café. After that stop, I stayed awake for the next couple hours of what was in total about a 6 hour drive to Córdoba, which is in the south of Spain in a region called Andalucía. The ride was actually very relaxing…the sun was out and we passed through some scenic regions, while I listened to my ipod and just thought how lucky I was to be here seeing a new region of Spain after my first week of classes. If I was in the U.S. I would be doing the same old, working, doing nonstop reading, etc.

it was so sunny and nice and peaceful out, people were actually laying around sunbathing.
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When we arrived in Córdoba we were amazed at how absolutely gorgeous the place was! It was sunny and clear blue skies outside, and we didn’t even need to wear our coats! We saw tons of orange trees and fountains and pretty whitewashed buildings. The town had this quiet, peaceful feel to it and the air felt fresh and breezy. We found our hotel and then wandered around the streets of the old town, taking pictures of whatever looked cool. Then we made our way back to the hotel for our guided tour of the Mezquita, an amazingly huge old Muslim Mosque that was transformed into a Catholic Church after the town was reconquered in the Middle Ages. After that, we wandered around and found a place to eat dinner…we made our way back to a place that we had passed on our way back to the hotel earlier. The owner of the restaurant was this cute old man who had been so friendly and talkative with us, joking around with us (in Spanish in a thick Andalusian accent, of course) that we couldn’t resist but return, even though the prices were pretty expensive. We just ordered sangria and some tapas that ended up being surprisingly good. Then we went to another tapas place where everything was only 2 euros, but we were disappointed because the food wasn’t that good and it was dead quiet in there and had a creepy ambience with pictures of bulls all over the place. We made our back to the hotel and got ready for the flamenco show! It ended up being amazing, very fun to watch. Then many of us were exhausted, even though it was only about 12:30 (very early by Spanish standards), so we decided not to go out after that, even though Rocío, the director of our program who used to live in Córdoba, offered to show us some cool places to go out and it was very tempting.