Before leaving Ronda we visited the bull ring (Plaza de Toros), just up the street from the hotel. It is one of the oldest in Spain and also one of the most beautiful in design, and the museum, stables for the horses, areas where the bulls are kept and the arena and colonnaded stand were all worth seeing. We also wandered around the town in that area and discovered the shopping streets and many more cafes. Best of all we found a Phone Shop on the main street and at these stores you can recharge SIM cards for several telephone companies so we were able to add more to our iPhones and iPads in just a FEW MINUTES!
On our drive to Cordoba we passed beautiful hillsides, with olive groves in every direction, as far as the eye could see, for about 80 km, and then pastures of grain crops and sunflowers. Summer rain is almost a non event but the area is all irrigated by the Guadalquivir River, which also runs through Córdoba. The mountains are high, with snow suitable for skiing in the winter, which seemed hard to imagine with the temperature at 36C as we drove along the freeway (great roads, with a speed limit of 120 km/hr). We detoured to Antequera on route to Córdoba as we had been told about its many beautiful buildings and interesting limestone escarpment overlooking the town. Fortunately it was siesta time so we could easily drive around the narrow streets.
Our hotel, Las Casas de la Judería de Córdoba, was in a narrow lane (Tomas Conde) in the old Jewish area of Córdoba and the many winding lanes we had to travel along to get there were so narrow that we were not confident a car should be on them at all, especially as they were also full of meandering pedestrians. (We later discovered that a better route is to enter the hotel lane way from the other end, driving the wrong way for a short distance.) The 3-storey hotel is charming, with huge wooden doors at the gateway, where you can see the stone ground is worn from the carriages passing through for many years in the past. The courtyards, fountain, bright pink bougainvillea climbing up the white-washed walls, balconies, comfortable lounge room, excellent restaurant and outdoor pool all add to its charm, but the location is perfect - just around the corner from the Mesquite (Mosque), Córdoba's main attraction. Our room was on the second storey, with a large patio area overlooking the courtyards and pool, but it was too hot to sit out there during the afternoon so we decided to head for the mosque.
The mosque's construction began in the year 785, after the Islamic Moors invaded Córdoba. It is certainly one of the most spectacular buildings Greg and I have ever seen. It is vast and the multiple rows of columns and arches, built with deep red and cream coloured bricks are absolutely stunning. The most amazing thing is that in the 16th C the Christians, who had recaptured Córdoba in the 13th C, built a Christian cathedral INSIDE the mosque and covered the minaret of the mosque with a tower. (I find it fascinating that the brochure provided on entering the building refers to the building as a cathedral, as though it is insignificant that the mosque is there at all.) We spent a couple of hours trying to take in the incredible range of areas to see in both the mosque and the cathedral and it was well worth driving to Córdoba to have the privilege of seeing such a magnificent place.
We dined at the hotel restaurant that night in the courtyard with the fountain and tried the special cold soup of the area, a much thicker style of gazpacho, and then Greg had oxtail again (better than the dish in Ronda) and I had deboned shoulder of lamb. The evening was still extremely warm with no refreshing breeze like we had in Ronda.