DAY 84: Road Trip to Cordoba!!

check out dat HUGE bull!

 Early on this Friday morning we picked up our rental car and set out for Cordoba!!

It was about a 4-5 hour drive, but the landscape was absolutely beautiful. We had only made one CD, which we listened to like 3 times on the way down, but it was still pretty fun. We pulled off the highway on this gorgeous piece of land to have our picnic lunch and take pictures of the bull and set back on the road.

FUN FACT #55: Along most of Spain's highways, one can see giant billboard outlines of a bull. The Osbourne Bulls were originally used to advertise Brandy starting in 1956. In 1994, a law was passed that prohibited all road side advertisements, but the Osbourne Bull had become an icon. The people asked that the bulls stay, although all writing in reference to the Osbourne Company was painted over. So to this day, the 46 foot tall black silhouettes of bulls can be seen all over Spain.

Inside Mezquita!

We continued to drive on to Cordoba to see the famous Mezquita. For any of you who don't know, I had been to Mezquita previously, but Lizzy and Kief really wanted to see it. To shorten my long explanation of the history of this place that I gave earlier in my blog, it is essentially a church that was taken over by the Arabs and built into a Mosque which was then taken back by the Christians to become a Cathedral again. For more information and pictures, look under September- Day 7: Mezquita.

The three of us had a lot of fun running around in the columns of Mezquita. When we finished, we took a walk out onto the Roman Bridge of Cordoba and around the city before getting back in the car to try to find our hostel.

FUN FACT #56: The Roman Bridge of Cordoba was built in the 1st Century BCE. It leads across the river directly to the Cathedral-Mosque of Cordoba.

Us on the Bridge facing the outside of Mezquita

I have never driven a car in Spain. And after this trip, I will never want to in the future.

Us on the Bridge facing the river

It took us about 3 hours to try to find our hostel. We were using the crappy maps on our phones to try to finagle our way through the back side streets of Cordoba. And let me just say- things did not go well.

We found our way to a fork with a sign directly in the middle marking that it was a dead end. With a 50/50% chance of going down a dead end road, we picked the wrong one. While Lizzy did her very best to try to get ourselves our of this curved and very narrow street, we weren't ending up anywhere. Unfortunately, I do not know how to drive a stick shift and Kief was not insured on the car, so Lizzy was the only one of us who should have been driving. But after 45 minutes of being unable to move and clogging up the street (as this street was so narrow, no one walking could get around us!) two gentlemen kindly offered their services. One gave directionals while the other drove, and they managed to get us out of the dead end. PRAISE THE LAWD!!

Selfie inside Mezquita!

After an hour and a half of being stuck in side streets, we decided we needed wifi. We managed our way out of the worst of it and continued to drive around for 30 minutes looking for a McDonald's. Again, PRAISE BE THE LAWD! We were able to find one. But once found, we faced with the stupidity of our actions as we would have been better off staying in the car park we started in next to Mezquita. So we made our way back to the Cathedral-Mosque, parked the car, and carried our stuff to the hostel.

We made dinner and drank a much deserved glass of wine before hitting the hay. We had another long trip to take in the morning- next stop GRANADA!