Seville with a quick trip to Cordoba

We did lots of wandering around Seville in between working and schooling the kids. We are following the NZ school year and so around 16 December we had the annual “Prize Giving” to commemorate the end of the school year. The kids rolled their eyes a little bit, but I think they appreciated it. (That’s what I tell myself!)

It was a very festive time of year, just before La Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) and Christmas day, but the real festivities are 6 Jan, El Día de los Reyes (Day of the Kings, the ones who visited the newborn Jesus).

End of the school year for the kids, with a little wandering:

Our quick trip to Cordoba

What an amazing city steeped in history! It took about 2 hours on a fast train and we arrived on Saturday mid-morning to a very quiet town (even quieter than Seville on a weekend morning!) and we had a hotel booked for Saturday night and Sunday night (we usually only do one day but we returned on Monday this time which worked fine.

Cordoba has a Roman bridge from that era and it’s large, really well maintained, and is a part of a larger group of historic buildings, one of which is the Mosque Cathedral of Cordoba. Walking around these buildings we were constantly awe-inspired. Truth be told we had tapas for the second time and the waiter brought out a dessert wine that knocked our socks off!

Another interesting fact for us kiwis:

Córdoba is one of the few cities in the world that has a near-exact antipodal city – Hamilton, New Zealand.

It’s easy, and fun, to get lost wandering the streets and narrow alleys, which is always our preferred mode. The map reminds us where we’ve been. 🙂

Of course we found a very modern, slick dunny and took a quick snap of that. You find when travelling Europe that finding a dunny is not always easy, make sure you have change ready for public ones that work, or to get a cup of coffee somewhere so you can use their dunny.

We took another great “free” walking tour (free when you start but not when you finish, give your tour guide a tip worthy of their effort when the tour is over) and our guide called us “Family” which I thought was endearing. I know what the word family means in Spanish (all us friends, hey, we’re all friends here kind of a vibe) but Alice wasn’t as keen on the phrase and that’s ok.

What was great is the day before we stumbled upon almost all the tour’s locations, but her knowledge gave us a much better insight into the history of Cordoba, which was under Persian rule for 400 or so years. They have even found remains of Neanderthal settlements there! It’s the hottest city in Europe with an average summer temperature of 37C/99F. Glad we were there in winter instead.

Cordoba had a central plaza, very small, but that was filled with amazing things to buy, one lady was a Romanian toy seller who complimented me on my Spanish but let’s take that with a grain of salt, shall we?!

Ok, one more post on Seville. I still can’t believe we’re not there anymore, it was so great.