Day 4 - Cordoba, Spain

Day 4 - Cordoba 

Well this day started out awful! We thought it was a brilliant idea to forego another night in the hostel by taking an overnight bus to Seville to catch a bus to Cordoba. Keep in mind this is the only way to get to Cordoba from Lisbon (well at least the most direct but there is a morning bus if preferred).  The bus literally stopped in no less than 6 small, cobblestone covered towns so needless to say we got very little sleep in our 7 hour trip. Upon arriving to Seville and finally getting registering where we were I had the terrible realization that I left our BOSE headphones on the bus! It was 530 am and no offices were even open to try to figure anything out. I was on the verge of a meltdown when Brian reassured me that it was OK that I lost his Christmas gift to me. No problem. Fast forward a few days and the amazingly ethical bus driver found the headphones, put them on a bus to Seville then realizing we had already made it to Barcelona at at point sent them to Madrid an downward to Barcelona! Even as Brian sits next to me now I still can't believe we got them back. They saw more of Spain than we did! 

Anyhow, thanks to Brian's reassurances we were able to still enjoy the day in Cordoba partly due to e fact that we had a hotel room complete with a full sized bed and our own bathroom! We were feeling like kings! 

We headed straight to the Cathedral once we checked into the hotel around 12 pm. The Cathedral has an interesting history. It started as a mosque for 5000 people then when the Christians conquered the area they built a cathedral inside the mosque only to be returned to a mosque later on with an extension that would now allow 9000 people to worship there. Today, it is an active Catholic Cathedral within the walls of the mosque. It truly is one of the most unique churches I have ever visited and was well worth the crazy travel experience to get there. After our visit, we wondered around the town and admired the beautifully preserved old town. We stumbled upon the only italian restaurant in town and at the time i was relunctant to go considering we had 10 days in Italy ahead of us but now in hindsight i think it was the best pizza we have had on our trip and trust me....we ate a lot in Italy. If you find yourself in Cordoba check out Di Raffaello Trattoria Pizzeria. 

After our first real nap on the trip we ventured out to find this little square an Australian told us about. We got there a bit early by Spain's standards so not too many people were around  but we enjoyed our drinks at Taverna la Corredera nonetheless. Then we headed out to seek an authentic looking tapas restaurant. We landed at Casa de la Tapa Cordobesa. Since we didn't really know what was what on the menu we opted for the preset tapas menu of 6 items for us to share. The first course consisted of some chorizo sausage, an odd cold cheesy(?) thing with bacon and some spinach with chickpeas. Te sausage was the star. The next  ham and cheese croquettes were the highlight. The second course proved to be more in line with expectations and we really enjoyed the ham and cheese croquettes. The other two dishes were pork throat with fried egg and little pieces of fried chicken in an eggplant sauce. Yummy! 

All in all it was a good day despite our loss of the headphones. If you visit the cathedral be sure to get the Audio guide. It was very helpful in understanding the complicated history.