26 June Toledo to Seville via Cordova

Neither of us slept too well – too hot and no air conditioning in the room, although a bit of a breeze did finally come through the window towards the morning. After the usual breakfast of coffee and croissant we headed out of town for Cordova.

We passed through interesting countryside today as we passed through/around mountains and alongside dams, 

with fields of sunflowers and olive groves in abundance

 past lots of little towns/villages with their houses with white washed walls

We were also back in an area with more wind turbines and vast solar farms. We also passed a massive bank of what looked like reflectors for solar thermal generators.

On arrival in Cordova we were lucky in that I had asked Karen to direct us to Puerto Del Perdon, the gateway to the Mezquita. She couldn’t take us all the way there as the street was closed off but there was parking on that street right close to the Mezquita. We found a space to park but so did the fella that was walking up and down the street directing cars into parking spaces for a fee. He wasn’t going to walk away from our car until we had paid him for finding the car space!!!

We have been sheltered and free from this sort of activity until now. Another uncomfortable incident was when two women bailed Bill and I up and separated us, they gave us each a sprig of rosemary and proceeded to tell our fortunes, expecting payment for this. We finally managed to extricate ourselves and walk away.

We didn’t spend long in Cordova, just long enough to have a bite to eat, walk around the Mezquita and over the Roman bridge.

It was uncomfortably hot and we were pleased to be getting back into our air conditioned panda and on the road again.

We had decided to push on from Cordoba to Seville for the night, so that we could catch up with our itinerary, seeing as we have booked accommodation etc for two days hence.

We luckily stumbled on some undercover parking near to the place we had selected to stay the night – The Repistur. We did however have difficulty actually finding the place using the Tom Tom as it is geared towards driving and not walking and we kept getting dud directions.

The Repistur is a huge block of apartments in the Triana district, just over the bridge on the other side of the Rio Guadalquivir. Believe it or not, having an apartment was as cheap as, if not cheaper than a room in a hotel. It was advertised as having a laundry, but there again it was one where you had to send your things away so we opted for draping washing all over the apartment.

Thanks to Heidi for the tip about the Maria Luisa gardens and the Plaza De Espana as that was where we headed. I am surprised that the Plaza isn’t given more promotion – it houses a massive building with incredibly ornate ceramic tiling everywhere. It was established for the 1929 international fair.

With the help of the Tom Tom ap. again, we managed to find somewhere close to the plaza to eat and even managed to find a supermarket “Open Car” to make some  purchases on our way back to our apartment.