Cordoba

We took a day trip to Cordoba from Seville. It's about 45 minutes by train though the train stations in Spain are not located anywhere near the city centers! But that's good, because you get a ton of exercise walking to and from the train stations in Seville and Cordoba.

To be honest, there was nothing to see in Cordoba except for the Mezquita HOWEVER the Mezquita is worth the trip. It's a church inside a mosque. And, it's beautiful. I'd rank it in my top 5 church interiors for the mosque part, the atmosphere, and the suddenness of finding yourself in a bright white church in the middle of a candlelit mosque.

Below are tons of pictures of the Mezquita. It was originally a church, then in the 8th-10th century it was converted to an enormous mosque, then in the 13th century a church was built into the middle of it, retaining most of the mosque. The minaret was converted to the bell tower, shown in the first picture below.



Below are pictures of the mihrab, or prayer niche. It's in the background in the first two pictures.



Here are pictures of the church part. You can see a little in the second picture how it's just in the middle of the mosque.



Again, the bell tower:



We walked across the Roman Bridge, which was built by the Romans in 1 BC and I think two of the arches are original (according to Wikipedia). Regardless, it's old.



Tapas for lunch, of course. Below is some fried eggplant strips with honey. Interesting, and tasty.