Episode 11, 4/23/2009 – Cordoba, Muslims, Jews, and discotecas.

Our excursion on Saturday took us to Cordoba, an old Roman-turned-Visigoth-turned-Christian-turned-Muslim-turned-Christian city. It has a lot of history and one magnificent cathedral, which previously was a mosque under 3+ centuries of Islamic rule. Characteristic of the Catholics, when they take something over, they make it seem like it was always theirs to begin with. Minarets become towers with crosses on them and the mosque or mesquita becomes a very eclectic cathedral. The Islamic influences are evident (I mean, there’s Arabic designs on the walls), but the odd and kind of cool part is that smack dab in the middle of all of the Arabic stuff, there’s a Gothic-style cathedral with an alter and an organ and a chorus. It’s beautiful, but extremely strange.

After the excursion to the cathedralmosquething, we went into the old Jewish quarter to see a statue of some Jew…who was important as a doctor but whose name completely escapes me. Then we went into a synagogue which was more old than historic, if you know what I mean. It was about the size of a bedroom, but DID survive since the early 10th century. So it was impressive, but not beautiful by any means.

After that, we had an hour or two to explore the town of Cordoba, which was fun. I bought some gifts from the kitchy touristy stores. I also “seriously” considered buying a sword…until I realized that bringing it back to the states would be slightly tough. Oh well.

The night was a mixed bag. The bus ride back, I was able to sleep, but the rest of our group didn’t and consequently did really feel like going out. We went out anyway with the gran proposito of doing what is called in Spain a “botellón”, which is essentially a BYOB (no, not the System of a Down song) in the streets. It would have been fun, except for me and Stephanie were the only ones who bought anything …Haha, oh well. We planned to finally go to Buddha, the club extraordinaire that I’ve been telling you so much about. The best laid plans go astray. Our tired group fragmented and we ended up not being able to find Buddha. You may think that’s impossible, but I assure you, Sevilla is the most confusing city of all time. Getting turned around is a common occurrence, so we chocked this one up to fate. It wasn’t all bad, though. We drowned our sorrows in churros and chocolate and suddenly became much happier. Next time, though, will be the charm.