MICHAEL:

So the picture for this blog entry is of a natural park called El Torcal. I went there one day while Jeanne spent theday in Córdoba, checking out the sites and park benches and cafes. El Torcal is a limestone mountain area in the northern part of Málaga province. It´s been eroded by wind and rain for a really long time (probably thousands or tens of thousands orof years or more, I don´t really know, as I just skimmed the geological info and took in the wonders. The landforms are quite wonderful, somewhat reminding me of parts of Dinosaur Park in Alberta. It was a fun but exhausting day, taking up most of my day just to get there by train from Córdoba, and do a hike in the mud and rocks, and then travel back to Córdoba. I saw vultures and and flocks of sheep and one mountain goat.

Córdoba was interesting. It was the original big Muslim city in Spain, first occupied by the Arabs in the 900s. The biggest thing to see in Córdoba is the Mezquita. This is a gigantic mosque (we think we remember hearing that it was the third larkest in the world) of vertical columns and arches. But the mosque wasd built on the top of an earlier Visigothic church. And after the Moors were driven out of Córdoba (in the 1200s), the mosque was turned into a cathedral, so while all of the pillars and arches and Arabic motifs remain, it is full of chapels and Christian treasures and altars.

JEANNE

We took the train from Seville to Cordoba. I love travelling by train, and the ones here are clean, fast, and on time. When we got to Cordoba, the tourist information was closed for siesta, and there were no maps available. we headed out of the train station in exactly the wrong direction, and probably tripled our walk to the hotel. (Turns out that had we left by the correct end of the station, and walked across the station plaza we would have found a map hidden there.) While the old quarter is densely built with curving narrow streets (it´s required) the city also has wide boulevards and ribbon parks, and the Guadalquivir runs through the heart. I spent part of one of Michael´s hiking days in the Botanical Gardens, where I saw again this marvellous tree - it´s a large tree, and has pink and white blooms that look like asian lilies - from a distance it´s a pink cloud. I picked an orange off a tree and ate it - something I´ve been wanting to do. I want to live somewhere where the jasmine grows through the orange trees!

When we visited the Real Alcazar we probably spent as much time in the attached gardens there. They´re kind of a mix of moorish and italian styles.

Hilary - there´s music in the background - it´s ´video killed the radio star´!

Mark - Happy Birthday!

MICHAEL:

It´s astounding how late everybody stays up here. We changed hotel rooms in Córdoba after one night to get one facing the courtyard rather than the street. People are wandering around the streets in what we thought was our quiet neighbourhood at 2:00 a.m., talking really loudly (this was about the same time as the city workers came out and hooked up big firehoses to hose down the pavements in the square opposite the hotel). I gave up trying to sleep for the rest of the night, and went out for a walk, thinking I´d find a quiet city square to pull up on a bench under a streetlight and read my book. The only poroblem is, that at 5:00 a.m. lots of people are still out on the streets, not being particularly rowdy, but jhust lots of poeple, hanging out with their friends, going to bars, driving their motorcycles...

Yesterday I walked out of Córdoba to a place called Madinat Al-Zahra, which was the Caliph Abdul al-Rahman´s palace, and is now a partly reconstructed archaeological sight. It´s very extensive, and the remains of walls show where kitchens and sleeping quarters were for palace guards and servants, and where the caliph´s throne room was, and the stables. And it was peaceful out there on the hillside above Córdoba.

Today we took the train to Madrid, and then hung out in what may be the biggest train station I´ve ever been in, and took a connecting train to Toledo. The Madrid train station has a botanical garden in the main concourse, complete with a large pool wioth turtles in it. It´s dark, so we haven´t seen much of Toledo, but we will tomorrow.

JEANNE

There´s an exhibit in town - Antique Instruments of Torture (which we´ll skip) and one of it´s sponsors is Amnesty International.