[Photos: Cordoba entrance, Cordoba Mesquite, Madrid tapas bar]
Up with the alarm, had our normal cornflakes and muesli breakfast, then out into the city. First stop was the old Arabic baths, which should have been open last night, but had shut early. We have found shop and museum hours quite frustrating. They are not only often closed during siesta, but can be slow to open, quick to close, or simply don't open at all. At least we have rarely been trapped by places having closed days – normally Monday or Tuesday.
The baths were a little disappointing, as it was hard to see how they had been used. We went from there to the synagogue, one of only two remaining in Spain. The Spaniards and the Inquisition did a ferocious job of removing Jews, considering there were large populations of them at some points. The synagogue was really quite a small and lightly decorated building, where we had expected something a little more generous, having seen the massive amount of decoration in the Christian and Muslim religious edifices. Out through the winding streets again. We love the building entrances here. Most have beautiful heavy wooden doors, often with iron or brass studs, then a lovely vestibule, invariably tiled to dado height. Then there is normally a pair of wrought iron gates leading into the building proper, or often an internal courtyard. The biggest courtyards will then have planting or water too. One of the main pleasures of Cordoba for us has been the walking about discovering new streets and entrances to look at.
Our final stop in Cordoba was the cathedral, which was in fact the mosque for the first centuries of its life, and apparently built on an old Visigoth church before that. What a building! The outside wall is huge, containing both the mosque and a large courtyard. The inside is equally large, being a forest of columns with the distinctive banded red and cream arches that we have seen in many books. On entering, we just stood and marvelled for a bit. The sheer number of columns is overwhelming. It was started with a decent size mosque, then doubled, then doubled again before the Christians took over and made their mark on it too. It was fascinating to see the way the Christians fitted Christian requirements into a Muslim building, and also pleasing to see that there was a surprising element of respect for the earlier religion. The mihrab was still there with a number of surrounding bays, and a large bay near the centre had been left in Arabic style.
There were a number of religious officials wandering about, in their brilliant scarlet and purple robes, which added to the atmosphere a little. It was clearly well worth the detour to get to Cordoba. Having absorbed as much of the atmosphere as we could in the time, we got back to our hotel (12pm checkout as with all of Spain) and headed back through the centre of Spain to Madrid. James (as in "Home James"), the GPS took us neatly to the door of our Mojacar owners. A bit of fun on the way in as we went through a 5km tunnel, with several splits in the road, and of course being a tunnel the GPS had no idea where we w ere. We must have guessed right though.
Our hosts Ana and Pepe were very pleased to see us. We didn't have long with them, as the car was due back at the depot near the airport by 5pm, but being able to offload our gear made the return trip easy. The car return was amazingly efficient. There was a man walking round the car before we had even stopped, and not ten minutes later we were on our way to the airport in their courtesy van. Madrid has a nice simple modern metro system, and for the grand sum of 2€ each we found our way back to Principe Pio, the station nearest our accommodation. We had arranged with our hosts to ring them when we got back, and after 15 minutes they arrived on foot to give us a tiki-tour of the inner city.
It's another generous city with lovely buildings and some big squares. But the best bit was stopping at the Mercado for tapas. It was an art nouveau style building (as many markets seem to be) with a mix of market stalls and tapas bars. The great thing is that you can order a drink from one bar, and then bring over tapas from several others, and stand at the bar and eat them. Pepe ordered a couple of different types of jambon (like prosciutto) and Ana ordered some nice salmon, tomato and cucumber on toast, together with some very good lager. The place was packed with hundreds of people doing the same as us. Spaniards eat their main meal in the middle of the day, and therefore many just eat tapas in the evening. Madrid was bright and noisy, with the streets and squares full of people. Back to their home for a couple of hours talking, including with Aurora and Anaola (?) (the two daughters), then off to bed, with the Prado being the main order of the following day.
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