Getting out of Toledo turned out to be a lot easier than getting out of Madrid: Toledo is relatively small, so there’s only one main road getting in and out of town. We had what we thought was a decent set of driving directions and we printed out the corresponding maps to pdf for offline reference… yet somehow we still managed to get lost. Google maps may be great for following well marked roads, but we had underestimated just how confusing the road signs were in Spain. I really wish there was a way to save Google maps offline (and I miss my GPS!). So right off the bat we took the wrong highway (or stayed on it too long?), and missed the autovía completely: an awesome, beautiful detour that cost us an extra 1+ hours. Time well spent. We ended up staying on the old 2 lane highway that passed through the smaller towns along the way and hit some beautiful mountain passes through fields of olive trees. When we arrived in Córdoba we managed to get lost (I know, recurring theme), but similar to arriving in Toledo we found our hotel completely by accident. :)
The next day we woke up early, as we kind of lost time (literally) driving over from Toledo. The morning was crisp and we had done a little bit of research, finding out that one of the better sights to see here, La Mezquita, was free to visit before 10am. This was a nice surprise and a great start to our day. What we hadn’t realized was that the 10am restriction also meant that no tour groups were allowed to enter early in the morning. Bonus! The Mezquita is a wonderful building to explore. This modern day church was originally a mosque before the 14th century and still retains most of it’s moorish architectural style and beauty. Viewing the building from the outside does little to prepare you for the elegance displayed inside. I can do it little justice describing it myself. To view an excerpt from the Fodor description, Click Here.
Once the tour groups started to arrive we exited the Mezquita and started a walking tour of the city. Our favorite part was exploring the narrow twisted streets of the Judería along the wall of the Puerta de Almodóvar.
Check out the online pictures for more details:
http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/Cordoba
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