39 C = 102 F, more or less
You know how on at least one episode of "Amazing Race" every season there is a day when a team goes completely off the rails? Well, that almost happened to us - almost. We had intended to leave Santiponce at 9:30 for the drive to Cordoba. We met up at 9:15, but by the time the car was loaded, and Jorge and Gema bought sandwiches for later, and we got gas, etc, it was much later. While we were getting gas, two busloads of schoolkids unloaded to visit Italica. I am SO glad we got to see it last night, when we were almost the only ones there!
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The landscape of Andalucia is very different from any I have seen so far. It's brown and slightly hilly, with olives on all sides (still no good pictures). The drive was less than 1.5 hours, and we needed to be at our tour of Cordoba's beautiful patios at noon. In the original plan, leaving at 9:30, that would have gotten us to Cordoba with an hour or so to spare. But it was not to be.
We stopped along the way at a gas station in hopes that they would have coffee. We got a bit distracted by the fact that the gas station was home to two parrots - an African grey and a blue and gold macaw! They were on open perches and seemed friendly enough, but they didn't talk (at least not to me).
We arrived in Cordoba just before noon, then had to find where we needed to be, in the midst of heavy traffic, and we needed to find parking (cue the yelling and bad words). I couldn't be much help because I cannot for the life of me figure out their parking rules (or their driving rules in general). Jorge got our tour guide on the phone for some direction and to let him know that we were trying - really trying - to get there. As the minutes ticked by, we were afraid that we might miss the tour altogether. We finally found parking, then rushed to locate the guy in the narrow little alleys (streets, actually). When we finally got there, we found that they had waited for us after all - we were only 10 minutes late, remarkably.
The patios are incredible! From the street, they are just simple house doors, but when they are opened you enter another world. So much attention to detail, hard work, and obvious pride in their patios! There are competitions amongst the patio folk, and some of them proudly display their winner's plaques in the patio.
Patio number 1
In the tour group was a very pushy woman (and the only one wearing heels on the cobblestones). She asked me to take a picture of her and her husband, then asked at least two other people to do the same. When we would enter a patio, she would elbow her way into the best spot for picture-taking, then stand there so no one else could take any from there. She wanted to be the center of attention at all times - asking for a cutting of a plant, wanting to have someone take her picture watering the plants with a can on a stick or smelling a lemon from the lemon tree. In short, she was an obnoxious pain in the butt. I told Jorge that if she elbowed me one more time I was going to knock her down. At the last house, I sat in the shade under the roof while all of the lemon business was going on. The woman's husband was sitting near me, looking long-suffering and bored. I swear, I hadn't moved my feet in ten minutes - I swear it! But.... Ms Pushy came toddling over to her husband with the lemon she had asked for (after the guy had given one to Gema), and she TRIPPED OVER MY FOOT! HAhahahahaha! She SO deserved it, and it was even better that it really was an accident. I kept from laughing long enough to get outside to tell Jorge what had happened. Gema saw it happen, and we have been giggling about it all day.
Tomorrow, we have some more sightseeing to do in Cordoba before heading to Granada in the afternoon. On Saturday morning we will see El Alhambra, then head to Toledo for the night. And on Sunday morning, I start my journey home.
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