Travel With Peggy: Cordoba - Sept. 14th

Cordoba - Saturday - Sept. 14th - Part 2

We found out from our hotel that today was a special local holiday and there would be marching bands throughout the city. They would march from their local church to the Mazquita. It did make for a more difficult time getting around but it was very interesting seeing the locals all dressed up following the bands and heading towards the Mezquita.

That morning Jim, Ed and I went for a morning walk to the Alcazar, down by the river to the Roman Bridge and east through the town back to the Mazquita and return to the hotel by meet the gang for lunch. Theresa had remained at the hotel for a quiet morning off. While, Sheila & Tony collected laundry from the group and headed off to conquer washing clothes. What was only to be an hour job for them turned out to be almost 3 hours long and they missed a great lunch, but everyone had clean clothes.

The above 2 pictures are of the Alzazar - Jim, Ed and I didn't bother to tour the old fortress because we were short on time.

The Guadalquivir River which flows on to Sevilla and eventually out to the Atlantic. It was once navigable from here but not now. The Roman Bridge with its ancient foundations dating back to the 1st century surviving. The arches date back to the 16th century.

The unfinished Renaissance arch was designed to give King Philip II a royal welcome, but he arrived before its completion - so the job was canceled.

In this picture you can see the Mezquita with the cathedral's roof coming up in the center.

This is the marching band we met on the Roman Bridge, it was coming into down from across the river. We ran into this same band later in town.

The above 2 pictures are of the outside of the Mazquita and the beautiful wall.

Here we ran into the same band and I got some pictures of the young kids playing. The little one with blond curls was helping their partner turn pages and keep up…really cute.

We picked up Theresa from the hotel and left Sheila & Tony a note to join us for lunch at the restaurant. At this time we didn't know about their 3 hour laundry story.

These some of the best calamari rings I've had in years - melt in your mouth. They came with an olive oil herb mayonnaise.

We tried their house speciality of crispy fried eggplant with a lightly sweep sauce. We thought the sauce was honey but it turned out to be a reduction of their dessert wine. It was our favorite…..I'm lucky that I got this picture of the last bite remaining on the plate - it was eaten that quickly.

I had a chicken dish with a Middle Eastern flavor but found the couscous very dry and just eat the chicken.

The group got back to together later that afternoon. Tony delivered our laundry and we got the full story of doing laundry. We really did appreciate our clean clothes and what they had to go through to get them.

That evening we were down stairs in the hotel lobby waiting to go to dinner when Jim runs down to tell us all to come to their room. A parade was going by and we had the prefect view from the windows in their room….