Cordoba: more of the same? Not exactly.

We got to Cordoba by train, but on arrival were greeted by a shower of some very heavy rain. So it is quite plain that the rain in Spain did not fall mainly on the train! (I've been waiting for something like that...) We hurriedly got into a taxi and took the short trip to our hotel which is a five star Marriott - at last a bit of luxury!! The hotel is very swish, and our room on the fifth floor has a spa bath and a double shower, all the amenities you could want and a great view of parkland.

The biggest tourist attraction in Cordoba is a cathedral (what else) called the Mezquita (the Mosque). Now, Judith and I have seen a few Cathedrals by now, and to be honest we're starting to develop a rather large dose of cathedral-lag (it's a bit like jet-lag where you see too much of the inside of a Boeing 747).

However, I would have to admit to once again being surprised and impressed by yet another oversized religious building. It was originally a Visigoth church (AD 600), converted into a mosque (AD 785), expanded over the centuries by many moorish rulers to its current size, and then converted back into a Christian church in 1236 when Ferdinand III of Castille recaptured Cordoba. It has remained a Catholic cathedral since then with a few modifications every couple of centuries or so.

So, it looks very much like a massively huge mosque with a huge cathedral bunged into the middle of it - which it in fact is. However, it still looks spectacular and is different from any other cathedral we have seen. We certainly thought it was worth seeing.

After we saw over the cathedral, we had an ice cream and walked over the bridge to the other side of the river where we walked along the bank, getting back to our hotel via another bridge further downstream.

Today we have really just taken things easy, done some washing, bought some supplies at a supermarket, looked around the shopping centre nearby, and generally enjoyed the amenities of our hotel. We have needed to take a break from all this sightseeing and traveling.

Tomorrow we take the train to Madrid where we are scheduled to stay five nights.