In Cordoba, I discovered a unique accommodation style to Spain. The pension is an affordable barebones offering with private bedrooms and sometimes private bathrooms. The rooms are tiny but that does not bother me. I had air conditioning and a full size bed. The guy at check in was super friendly and happy to see me. He told he’s a big foodie and recommended that I eat the oxtail. He told me about the local cold, thick tomato soup, salmorejo. He gave me two restaurants that I could try for lunch and I set off into the city!
One of the delightful travel hints about Spain is that you can save money by getting some of the more expensive food items for lunch instead of at dinner. All restaurants have a lunch special. In Cordoba, the lunch special was about 8 EUR, but in Granada I would discover the price to be around 15 EUR. Depending on where I went, I might or might be saving much money by buying lunch specials. The first restaurant on the lunch list from the hostel was a total bust. There was a sign on the door that said they were closed for the summer, even though it was the middle of September. The second restaurant did not have a better outcome. This one was just totally closed, even though Google Maps showed their operating hours as being open. I opted for a restaurant on a small side street where I saw other people eating. I ordered the salmorejo and some other traditional meat dish and both were very medicore and maybe disappointing. I started wondering about how my tastes have become more particular since I am traveling on a budget and without a defined schedule. I have started feeling more serious about the value I am getting for the price of the food I am ordering. Of course, I always had this in mind, but now I cannot justify the price of Spanish tapas. While some are delicious, the portions are so small and the price, depending on the city can be as much as five dollars for a teeny, tiny plate of a slice of toasted bread and a slice of meat or cheese. That’s not good.
I had studied the Great Mosque of Cordoba when I studied architecture at NYU. I was incredibly excited to finally see it in real life. It’s grand. It’s a wonderful gift to the world. In the history of this structure, at some point pieces of the mosque were destroyed and dissected to shove a gigantic cathedral in the middle of it. How the designers and engineers of the time were able to make this all work is incredible. I found the most interesting parts to be where the mosque architecture merged with cathedral architecture. There is evidence all over of where architects made decisions to keep mosque stuff or to remove mosque stuff and add cathedral stuff.
Wandering around the streets of Cordoba, waiting for the weather to break, I came across the Separdic quarter. Unfortunately, the synagogue was closed for renovation. There are many references to Jewish history in Cordoba and it was quite difficult to tell references were purely touristic and which were historic.
I was getting hungry and I managed to find a supermarket that was open during siesta time. I recall walking around the town in amazement at how everything is still closed from the afternoon even at 6pm. My staple in Spain became smoked salmon sandwiches on baguettes with a very cold beer (usually a Radler or a Pilsner). This gave me some sense of familiarity from home (because we New Yorkers love lox) and also some sense of adventure for drinking beer outside in a public park (illegal in New York).