Trip Log – Day 6 – Cordoba

A Magical Night at the Mezquita and Our Long Anticipated Walking/Hiking Tour Begins

Ok, it looks like the fluffy bunny portion of our vacation has concluded. We did need the 5-days of sleeping 12 hours a night, the partaking in luxuriously long lunches with at least two glasses of wine, and the just wandering around to help us get over jet-lag and juice our battery packs for the next 10-days. And now we don our hiking boats, laugh at the rain, and earn every bit of that chocolate dessert that is waiting for me at the end of the night.

This is going to be a long post. So I apologize to my dad in advance, and if he wants to stop reading now, he can sleep easy knowing we are still alive and had a great day.

Let’s catch up about last night. Unfortunately photography was not allowed (poop), so I’m going to try to draw you a picture with words, and will preface it with its going to be an abysmal description.

It was dark (and past my bedtime), when we walked to the La Mezquita in a torrential rain downpour. There were 80 soaking wet people huddled outside in a cove, and one diminutive tour guide who was not to be messed with. We all spent the next hour together. My first thought was how was this woman going to keep 80 of us moving together according to her will. I mean she didn’t even have the requisite tour guide tool, a long stick with a bright object at the end. I really underestimated her. She was truly amazing.

She walked us in to the cathedral which was formerly a mosque, which was formerly a cathedral. It was pitch black except for 1 light shining through the a doorway in the middle. This is the old and official entrance to a building that is 2 football fields long, and 1 1/2 football fields wide. Seventy percent is covered in elaborate red and white double stone arches spanning the length of the building. Imagine, column upon column upon column as far as you could see in every direction.

As we were standing there in the dark, with loud solemn music playing overhead and echoing throughout the space, we listened to individual audio headsets. Mine had a male British voice using flowery language and really long words (I think I mentioned it was past my bedtime) to say…well, I don’t really know what. Maybe it was because I was tired, or overwhelmed by what I was seeing, but I really couldn’t follow along, so I decided to ignore the headless voice and just take it all in.

The tour guide led us on a circuitous path that doubled backed on itself several times. Only she really knew where we were going, but managed to time it perfectly to our individual audio sets. I didn’t realize we were flanked by security guards, until I stepped a toe out of bounds and he scooted me back into line. If you so much as even turned around to look behind you, they will motion to you to turn back around. This is a serious tour. Don’t even give them an inkling that you want to go off script or begin messing around. I honestly can’t imagine what they would have done if I pulled my iPhone out and tried to snap a photo.

In the middle of this massive dramatic and awe-inspiring space where you see row upon row of red and white columns with arches there is a cathedral. The last occupants popped the top of just the center of this enormous structure. Apparently the standard 30-foot ceilings didn’t allow enough light in. So they raised the roof to a 130-feet right smack in the middle of this giant structure. A massive alter and choir area was inserted that was so tall, it was almost impossible to lean back and take it all in.

Thinking back on it a day later, I still can’t get over the tour guide. 80 people weaving through a barely lit building blasting with music, and she managed to incorporate elaborate hand gestures to make sure we were all looking in the right place. And these weren’t any hand gestures (just the hand mind you – not the arm). They were a combination of Vanna White meets prima ballerina hands. And if you throw in a touch of hula hands you have the perfect visual. She did this for an hour.

In the Spain edition of Cocktail Conversation with Mark and Cat, after a brief catch-up we launched into an animated discussion as to why the popular weeping version of The Virgin Mary in Seville and a popular song/dance from the 90’s shared the same name of Macarena. For those of you who are dying to know, Macarena means “blessed” in Spanish. Now it gets tangled so don’t drink an adult beverage before reading this. There is a song about a flamenco dancer called Diana. The Macarena song guy adapted this song and changed the name from Diana to Macarena in honor of his daughter who is named…..Macarena. I don’t know. If my dad was a songwriter and wrote a song to honor me, I think I would prefer a lyrical ballad that doesn’t have a dance move that involves me slapping my tushee. Peter disagrees with me about the tushee slapping, and demonstrated several times the dance move. I continued the disagreement as long as possible because it was so entertaining to watch him.

As if this didn’t keep us riveted (I actually forgot the whole conversation this next morning), we then moved on to an interesting book on the cocktail table – Principles of Hotel Front Office Operations (in English). Cat proceeded to read enlightening excerpts from the book and Peter recreated the practice scenes with different facial expressions and arm gestures. I’m guessing someone attended a conference here at the hotel and left it behind. Now why, the hotel staff thought it would be good bar decor is a mystery to be solved later. I did point out to the waitperson that it was a terrible book to have in the bar of a hotel (of course with a smile on by face), it will be interesting to see if it is still there tonight.

Ok – you are caught up on last night. Now on to today. We met up with 9 other people who also signed up for the walking/hiking thing and immediately ventured out in the pouring rain for a 4 hour tour of an archeological tour outside of Cordoba called, Madinat al-Zahra. Only 10% of it had been excavated and I kept thinking that this must be as large as Pompeii once they are done. It was interesting to see how the ancient city was structured in terms of rank (who got to live where), and how visitors were received (it was a demonstration of power and wealth that involved many buildings, many rooms, that ended in massive gold barn doors folding back on themselves to a large cavernous room with rows and rows of those arched columns).