Touring Spain - A mix

Cordoba

Mezquita

During our trip we also made a quick visit to the city of Cordoba.  When I say a quick visit I mostly mean that we pick one thing to see, and then have a meal or a coffee or an ice cream.  So – not a major assault on the tourist sites.  In Cordoba, the chosen thing to see was the Mezquita also known as the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba.  And what a place it was! 

First it is enormous, estimated at about 400 x 600 feet.  There are large buildings everywhere in the world – but this was essentially one large room, supported by many, many arches, most of them double arches.  It dates back 12 centuries, was a mosque and now has a cathedral right in the middle.  It has had Holy Mass said daily since 1236.  Astounding.

Naturally a building of this size was one that had additions done over the years but luckily there was a wonderful consistency of the architecture so the building flows as it should.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is also classified as a National Monument and a Site of Outstanding Universal Value, another World Heritage designation.

This building proved to a real unexpected jewel.

Gibraltar

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Another location visited was Gibraltar, which turned out to be way cooler than expected.  It does indeed look like a giant rock, just sticking straight up at the edge between Spain and the Mediterranean.  We needed our passports to get into Gibraltar, and waited in quite a line to drive through as well.  Oddly, on the way back into Spain they just waved us through.

We took a cable car to the top – or at least as high as a tourist can go.  The very highest peak is for military use.  We had heard about the monkeys, and yes there they are right on the top of the rock.  We even saw one opening the door to the café, walking on in, and pooping on the table before being chased out.  It was quite interesting, till the pooping part.  The folks that worked in the café are quite patient chasing them out and then watching them waltz right back in.  We watched a German tourist attempt to pet one, but he got hissed at for his trouble, so I am guessing hands free is the way to go.

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We ended up walking down the hill on the way stopping at tunnels that were in use during a siege, and others that were used in the Second World War. 

In any case the views over the harbour are wonderful

Montilla (wine and olive area)

To start, this area bears absolutely no resemblance to any wine tourism that we have done in the Niagara region, and elsewhere in North America.  We started the process by downloading the wine tourism guide for Montilla (in English luckily) and planned from that for hotels, bodegas (wine cellars), laagars (where the grapes are pressed) and restaurants.  Should have been good – right?  However, there is minimal signage to find the way to these places, and none seemed to be open on Sundays, and very few were open on a Saturday, contrary to what was in the documentation and on the internet.  Even when it turned out to be open we were generally asked why we were there and advised that we should have called ahead.  That said we did get to taste and purchase some very interesting wines, most of which were more sherry like than not.  We also picked up 2 bottles of something called Pedro Ximenez which is quite syrupy and raisiny (and not too bad over ice cream).  One thing that was fun was the buying part.  After a lifetime of LCBO pricing we were buying wines from 4-8 Euros – so all under $12 a bottle.

But – as it turned out, the Montilla area has significantly more land dedicated to olives and primarily olive oil production.  Since this was also something we were interested in - all was well.  And at the end of the day we make wine in Canada – but don’t grow olives.  There were neat groves of olives as far as the eye could see, rolling over hills and up the sides of mountains.  Most of the land was extremely dry with minimal evidence of any irrigation.  It seems that olive trees can manage in that environment.  We did find an olive museum attached to an artisanal olive oil plant and the owner showed us around and answered all our questions.  It was lovely and interesting to talk to him – mostly English but also some Spanish.  At the end of the day this fellow was really the only person we met in the Montilla area that spoke any English at all.  Tourism is not big in the winter it seems.  This all made our eating a bit interesting too.  Since customers were few, the restaurants mostly had a selection of two or three dishes and these were told to us verbally.  Our last meal was just a straight up gamble.  We just guessed a bit, and had a fabulous meal of braised oxtail.  We also learned to say – "please speak slowly" in Spanish!

Malaga Automotive and Fashion Museum

Well today we went to the automotive museum in Malaga.  I normally follow Bob around in these places with a rather glazed look in my eyes – frankly they are all just cars.

However this one had a twist – it was said to combine a car museum with fashion.  OK – this made me curious enough to go willingly.

Anyway – the museum did indeed combine the two by taking cars that were restored extremely well, and that I guess had a lot of artistic content and combined them with a couture dress.  The reasons for the choice of dress with car was variable – maybe someone was photographed in that dress near one of these cars, or it was the same era, or colour, or some design element was the same.  In any case it was really very neat !

Granada

We also popped into Granada where we first wandered about in the old city a bit and then made our way up the hill (way up the high hill) to the Alhambra.  Through some strange misstep we entered through the exit and saw all the buildings from the outside but could not actually enter them, which was OK.  It was still quite lovely including good views of Generalife which was basically a summer estate for the Nasrid kings started in the 13^th century.  Tried again another day and actually managed to get in through the entrance, but tickets to actually enter the buildings were sold out and again we toured the outsides, but this time we did get to enter Generalife