Hop on Hop Off Bus
As we only had a short amount of time in Cordoba, we stored our luggage in the lockers at the bus station and boarded the Hop on Hop off bus. The tour took us to the main tourist sights including a Roman temple under the town hall and the Roman bridge over the river Guadalquivir that was built in 1st century BC.
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| Roman temple at the Town Hall |
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| Roman Bridge |
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| Eastern influenced architecture |
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| Olie makes a wonderful doorman |
Cordoba Cathedral
Cordoba is well known for its World Heritage Listed Cathedral originating as one of the first Christian places of worship in the 6th Century AD. It was then converted into a Mosque in 785AD but then reconquered by the Christians in 1236 AD where Islamic artwork was integrated with Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles.
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| Islamic calligraphy inside a Christian Cathedral |
La Catedral Taberna
We ate lunch at a small tavern - La Catedral Taberna. The service was great and discovered a tasty local specialty of fried eggplant with a dark honey like syrup.
Missed the Bus
At this time, we thought we had plenty of time left to head back to the bus station. However, we misinterpreted our location (where the Hop on Hop off bus had dropped us off) and missed our planned bus to Granada but caught the next one 2 hours later, relaxing with local chilled beer at the train station.
Granada
It was a short bus ride to Granada station and then a cab ride to the Elvira Gate - the entrance to the part of town where our hotel was located. As we had pre-booked tickets for that night's session of the Nasrid Palaces at the Alhambra, we didn't have a lot of time to explore our surroundings. However, walking up the big hill to the Alhambra fortress we did manage to catch a glimpse of the local Semana Santa procession.
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| The Elvira gate |
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| Church near our hotel |
The Alhambra
The Alhambra dates back to 889 AD and is a World Heritage Listed site. The towering vantage point over the city was the reason it has been used by many rulers as their residence. As part of the tour, we walked through the key rooms of the palace that had been restored to reflect both the Islamic artwork and the style introduced by the Baroque Western European monarchs.
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| Inside the Nasrid Palace |
As the next day was raining quite heavily. we decided not to head back up to the Alhambra even though we had access to the site as part of the 2 day prebooked ticket. Instead we wandered around the neighbourhood to see Granada Cathedral where the Catholic monarchs - Ferdinand and Isabella were buried. The Cathedral was in use for Easter Sunday celebrations so we were not able to go inside. We explored the art-work of the local area and walked along a passage next to the River that was lined with old buildings and restaurants.
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| Another procession celebrating Holy Week |
La Fuente Terraza Bar
Lunch was at a small restaurant - La Fuente Terraza Bar. The walls of the restaurant were lined with photos of celebrities that had dined there - including F1 driver: David Coulthard. Food was tapas style including spanish omelette, pork knuckle and fried anchovies.
After lunch we headed back to the Granada bus station to catch our coach to Malaga. We were lucky to get on the right bus after it had docked at the wrong terminal. We only discovered this issue when Mei decided to investigate the location of our bus after seeing a flashing red word in Spanish where our bus number should have been displayed.
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