Date: Apr 18, 2010
Okay, I admit it. I’m a wuss. I wimped out. I folded and decided to pamper myself, without any kind of objection, I might add, from Carol who is usually tougher than I am.
After our garret in Seville, I really needed some ease and comfort here in Cordoba, so I booked us into a 4 star hotel which is literally across the street from the Cathedral. I pulled up to the hotel, parked (on the sidewalk, naturally) and went inside. The doorman took the keys parked the car and we went straight to our room where we both let out a sigh of relief and said, “Yes!” I opened up my computer, which connected instantly to the wee fee, and my mind and body just relaxed. By the way, sorry to disappoint those of you who wrote that they thought the wee fee letter was going to be about pay toilets.
We left our pension in Seville this morning, thunk, thunk, thunking our way back to Clio and got out of town. Sevilla is a great city and, in spite of my moaning and groaning, we thoroughly enjoyed it. Sevilla definitely qualified as the most electric place we have been in so far, but it’s huge and that in itself was part of the problem. We quickly took the small road to Cordoba and it was a real treat. While ominous clouds loomed overhead, it didn’t rain and we crossed a diverse landscape that was as rich to the nose as it was to the eye.
The HUGE tracts of orange groves are in full bloom and as Carol said, “You can smell their perfume even inside the car with the windows closed.” Grove after grove just seemed to go on and on. One grove was over three miles and seemed to be just as deep, although we couldn’t see how far back it went. The corn in the fields is already three inches high, and olive orchards were interspersed with the wheat fields which wafted in the wind. You could see the wind patterns by watching the tops of the wheat as they moved to and fro with every micro-burst of wind. When we traveled down the road in Portugal, because of the continual undulations of the hills, you never could get a feeling for the land itself. We did so by climbing to the top of castles, fortresses, and cities to get a panorama, but as soon as we crossed into Spain the landscape literally unfolded itself to us. The mountain ranges which border the two countries have provided some level of insulation for the smaller Portuguese country, but that protection gives limited views. Spain is very mountainous itself, but here in the south is it open and inviting.
It is sooooo nice to get to a country where I can butcher the language as only I can. Carol speaks Portuguese well and had no problems, but I was totally lost other than saying, hello, goodbye, thank you, and some simple counting. Now I can use my incorrect grammar, wrong tenses, poor vocabulary all together and still communicate in Spanish.
Last night when the torrential rain had subsided and was merely a steady drizzle we ventured out of our room for one last glimpse of Sevilla. Carol had her trusty Dollar Store umbrella with its two broken ribs which held the rain in puddles on top of the umbrella. She slipped on an orange peel in the street, went to one knee with her umbrella preventing her from a real tumble as it acted as a brace. We walked along and I started laughing because now the umbrella was totally turned inside out. It was utterly useless, even though she straightened it out as best she could. We passed a store and I ducked inside and asked if they had “paraguas” (umbrellas). The man said yes, they were $8 and so we bought a big one under which we could both walk. The man was from India and he was so glad to talk to us in English. We chatted for a while, threw her old one in the trash and left, new brolly in hand. We stopped at our wee fee coffee house where I had my coffee and Carol had a hot chocolate. My coffee was the same as always, but her chocolate was unlike anything we had ever seen. Carol described it as sweet mud. It looked like chocolate pudding that didn’t gel. It was thick and very sweet. It looked like what the Aztecs would have had. We didn’t ask but bill described it as Chocolate of the Indies. Must have been something particular to that café. While I was checking email, Carol said: “Oh look, there goes the Indian shopkeeper.” Then she added: “Oh my God, he’s got my umbrella.” And sure enough he did. It still looked ridiculous. We laughed so hard at something only we had a clue about.
Today, sitting on a stone bench alongside the Guadalquiver river where ships from the new world brought riches as far inland as Sevilla, I couldn’t help reflect that I still don’t understand how I’ve been as fortunate in my life as I am. As I said to Carol “I am sitting here with a good woman who is my best friend, have two great kids, grandsons who I wouldn’t change for the world, have my health even after falling 20 feet out of a tree, am prosperous enough to travel and am sitting in Cordoba one of my favorite cities in the whole world.” As Jeff Blatnick said when he won the Olympic gold medal: “I’m a lucky dude.”
I never know why certain places remain so strong in my memories or call me back with such vigor. Some past life connection? Some experience hidden in the coffers of my brain? I don’t know what it is, but ever since I was here when I was in the Army stationed in Germany and came here, it has been a place to which I’ve wanted to return. It is a tourist mecca and the streets are crowded with tourists. The innumerable shops give credence to the numbers of people who come to enjoy this city with so much history.
Around the Cathedral which was originally a mosque, are numerous alleys leading out in different directions, all with the requisite souvenir shops all selling exactly the same things – postcards, flamenco outfits for kids, Spanish fans and combs, filigree silver jewelry, tiles and pottery. I guess it is just the sheer number of people who visit that makes these cookie cutter shops profitable. Therefore, go in any direction from the Cathedral and it’s all the same, noisy, crowded, and hectic, even in April and in the rain. I can only imagine what a zoo it must be in the height of the season. The tourists are mainly Spanish, and while I really like them, they are not a quiet people. They are so boisterous. They say things in loud tones, even when the people to whom they are talking are just a few feet away. Hence the level of noise on the street is something less than peaceful. But I guess that goes with the territory. They are a happy people, they laugh a lot, smile a lot, and are famously friendly.
But get out beyond this two block radius, and things get wonderfully quiet. Alleys go in all directions seemingly without purpose. One street is called “Estoy Perdido,” “I am lost.” We laughed as we passed it, wove our way back to the cathedral, only to come back to the same spot. Indeed, we were lost. We had to take out the map to get the general direction we should be traveling. The perfume of orange blossoms permeated the air. The trees are quite tall, pruned in such a way to permit easy passing underneath. You can even pick oranges from your balcony on the second floor.
Across the street from our window is one of the walls to the cathedral courtyard. Moorish arches and Arabian knot windows looking like stone lace work are at eye level and lights on our hotel shine across the street at nighttime and give that yellowish, golden hue to the walls. All very ethereal.
A wedding took place in the cathedral last night, and a virtual fashion parade passed beneath us on their way into the church. It looked like a photo shoot for Elle, very elegant indeed. Being fashion-challenged as I am, I have no clue what’s going on at home. Carol buys all my clothes, and I’ve always admitted that if weren’t for her, I’d look like I stepped right out of the pages of a 1944 Wards Catalog. But purple is certainly the “In” color here. Purple dresses, purple sweaters, leggings, shoes, scarves, and a myriad of other female accessories.
It was here in Cordoba that Columbus received permission to sail to the new world, and in one of those seminal moments, history was changed, We walked the gardens of the Alcazar and beat the masses by getting there right when the doors opened. The Spanish had not even thought of arising yet and so it was peaceful. The rain drizzled on us, and I felt like one of those Nubians of old, who held the large shades and so provided relief to the royalty, as I followed Carol holding the umbrella as she got just that perfect shot that she wanted. “Here, hold the umbrella,” she said. Then moving forward to get a better angle, I’m trying to anticipate where she’s headed to keep the lens dry while she’s just concentrating on the composition.
While those of you in the new world, whose European history started ever so obliquely here in Cordoba, sleep, it’s noon here. The cathedral bells peal through the window of our room, and the din from the street tells me the Spaniards have risen. The rain has ended, the gargoyles have stopped spitting into the street, and it’s lunch time here. A good paella sounds like the order of the day. I haven’t had any alcohol in two days, so before my body reacts negatively, I think a good tinto or sangria, as Carol suggested, would go very nicely.
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