La Mancha and Córdoba

In Toledo, we picked up the car and headed to Córdoba. On the way, we drove through La Mancha, the flat, barren, arid plains in central Spain where Don Quixote was set. It was filled with olive and orange trees and had those funky little picturesque white Spanish windmills on many of the hill tops. We stopped in one town particularly known for this and spend about an hour taking photos. I took a lot of snaps here in particular because I always attempt to get one or two iconic photos from every trip I take that I can hang from my walls, and figured this would be about as good a chance at one as I’ll get in Spain. Unfortunately they were doing work on the castle in the background, so when I get home I’m going to need to PhotoShop out the crane in the background and the people on the street.


We also tried to go wine tasting as La Mancha is a significant wine producing area, but that didn’t really pan out as we couldn’t find any place that was open when we were driving through and could accommodate us without a pre-arranged appointment. Instead, we just took a scenic driving route through the wine country which allowed us to check out the vineyards.

We ended up in Córdoba that evening. We had to stay at a hostel in a dorm room because the Davis cup semi-finals were in town there that weekend and hotel prices had gone through the roof. This ended up being fortuitous, though, as we were able to do our laundry in the hostel and were sharing a room with just one other person, a charming French girl who was in Spain teaching English.

The big deal in Córdoba is the Mezquita, the huge mosque-cum-church that dominates the center of town. You would probably recognize if from the red-and-white striped arches that litter the massive room. It’s also neat to see the juxtaposition of two different buildings of worship. The mosque complex is enormous, and when the Christians booted the Moors from Córdoba they built their huge church right into the middle of the building, incorporating it right into the mosque. So you can be standing in a huge room with Muslim-style architecture everywhere, and then you walk twenty yards to the side and you’re then standing in what is unmistakably a Christian cathedral. And this is all done is a way so that the Cathedral is incorporated right into the structure of the mosque. Very cool.