After a reviving siesta, it was off to see a show at the Royal Stables - a mixture of flamenco and performances by highly trained Andalusian horses. It was held in a large arena, and was very dramatic with music, lights and load of action. The horses and riders worked very hard, but I do wonder about the life the horses lead as I'm sure the training would be arduous. Not great photos but you'll get the idea!!
It would be very remiss off me to not mention the famous Patios of Cordoba. The Patios refers to the windowboxes and pot plants used to decorate the white walls and houses in the old town. During the day we had admired many of them as we wandered around. In May they have a serious competition to find the best one, and some of the previous winners proudly display their plaques. Autumn is not the best time for them, but we still saw many that added colour to the plain white walls.
This morning before we left we had two museums to tick of our list.
The first was a Flamenco Museum which we both found very intriguing. We tried our hand at keeping the beat on some audio visual percussion boxes and enjoyed some old footage of flamenco dancers at the beginning of last century. A short film about the making of flamenco guitars was fascinating and there was a lot of information and music about styles and masters of flamenco. We had to drag pallets away.
Next was the Museum which is a tribute to Julio Romero de Torres a famous painter. The extensive exhibition of paintings were displayed in his house complete with frescoes. He was highly skilled and painted some superb realist paintings of women. Very beautiful.
Before we headed off down the highway we went in search of a Churreria which we had passed on our way to the Museums with a huge queue of people lining up to buy hot churros for Sunday breakfast. To my horror, as I entered the shop, the huge owner shook his head and told me they were just closed! What dreadful timing!
I asked him if I could take a photo of his menu as the only thing they sell is churros with, or without, chocolate. I must have looked so disappointed that he beckoned me over and gave me a few churros in a huge cone of paper for free! They were crisp and just enough. If we'd had a whole cone full of them we would have been sick!
Farewelling Cordoba we headed down the road for a couple of hours to to Amargo. It's distinguishing feature is that it is on the way back to Barcelona, and only a couple of hours drive.
Gloria took us along the back roads again but this time the roads were of exceptional quality, relatively new and basically devoid of any vehicles at all! Very odd indeed.
Given the hectic tourist pace of the last few days we were both hoping there was absolutely nothing to see here so we could relax. The apartment Ewan had booked is in the old part of town, but there is only a couple of blocks of it. If you take out the churches, then the old theatre and some rickety 16th Century buildings surrounding the Plaza Mayor is it. Thank God! Being a tourist can be exhausting!
We did a circuit of the old town and avoided going into any of the three churches. After a siesta we went back to the Plaza and had some very tasty tapas -well raciones (large tapas) for dinner followed by a quiet night.
More traveling tomorrow as we had for Cuenca.
Your revived correspondent
Dianne
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