I am not the kind of Brit who comes to Spain in order to seek out the Dog and Duck on the Costa for a decent pie and chips.  A people’s cuisine is the font and the mirror of its culture, and by not immersing yourself in one (not literally, you can drown even in a bowl of gazpacho) you deprive yourself of a route into the other.  Nonetheless, my old mate Terry Pratchett has these words of wisdom on the subject of guilelessly trying every “regional delicacy” in the [disc]world:

Any seasoned traveller soon learns to avoid anything wished on them as a ‘regional speciality’, because all the
term means is that the dish is so unpleasant the people living everywhere else will bite off their own legs rather than
eat it. But hosts still press it upon distant guests anyway: ‘Go on, have the dog’s head stuffed with macerated cabbage
and pork noses – it’s a *regional speciality*.

This quote leapt to mind [and to the back of the throat] today.  The guidebook tells you that “flamenquin” is the thing to eat in Corboda.  Don’t do it.  Don’t be convinced that scraps of  pork unworthy of any other dish, welded together into a phallus of equine proportions, then breaded and deep fried and served with chips and a bottle’s worth of mayonnaise,  will somehow be transformed by ingenious Andalusian recipes handed down from generation to generation, into something edible.  Or into anything from which your arteries will recover.  You’ll be deceived.

On the other hand, the local rabo de toro – bull’s tails – I can highly recommend.  Think boeuf bourgignon, but richer and more rib-sticking, with large tail vertebrae thrown in for free. TP has something to say about that, too:  Genuan cooking, like the best cooking everywhere in the multiverse, had been evolved by people who had to make desperate use of ingredients their masters didn’t want. No one would even *try* a bird’s nest unless they had to. Only hunger would make a man taste his first alligator. No one would eat a shark’s fin if they were allowed to eat the rest of the shark.

 

Apart from the mishap with flamenquin, the food and drink has been good here in Cordoba, which is smaller than Seville, prettier, and more fragrant.  Its story is that of all of Andalusia: wave after wave of rulers and cultures layering history and architecture on the city, so that as you walk the narrow Islamic street plan, which doesn’t wind so much as zigzag, you come across evidence left by the high water mark of each those waves.  In fact from a single  vantage point on the Roman Bridge, you can see the the work of 2nd Century Romans, 5th Century Visigoths, 8th Century Moors and 13th Century Catholics, not to mention all those who came after.

 

I arrived on Sunday 8th June (day 4) without a hostel booked and wandered with Jade to hers, but the only room available was a private one (a bank-breaking E30!), so I begged some wifi and booked into the Hostel Osio, closer to the river, the Mezquita and the centre of the historic heart of the city.  We walked around the Jewish quarter for a couple of hours in the early evening, when the light here is so rich that the sand-coloured stone buildings seem somehow more real against the azure sky, as if someone layered an identical slide on top of the first in the projector.  We walked along the river, and through streets too narrow to walk two abreast, past crumbling churches and tapas restaurants and souvenir shops selling those ubiquitous Robin Ruth “insert name of city here” bags that Temptation used to sell.  We saw the cathedral-mosque from all sides, but entrance is E8 after the first hour of the day, so we resolved to visit at 8.30 the following morning.  Before parting company we dropped into Salon de The, one of a couple of enchanting moroccan-style tearooms in the quarter, and had a bite to eat and a delicious Bedouin cardammom tea amid intricate plasterwork arches and the sounds of a trickling fountain and soft arabic music.  I was suddenly impatient for the later stages of the trip.

 

The evening passed uneventfully, finishing with the shisha and wine of my previous post, and against all odds and precedent I got to the cathedral for 8.30 when it opened.  One of the finest examples of Moorish architecture in existence (although I’m pleased I’m seeing it before the Alhambra), you walk in to a courtyard of palms and orange trees but step into the building at one corner to discover arches of alternating red-and-white voussoirs stretching away seemingly indefinitely in front and to the left of you.  I’d had no idea there was going to be so much inside, with the melding of cultures once again much in evidence: at one point I paused to take a picture of a wall of perfect Moorish arches-and-plasterwork only to take another step and see the crucifix adorning the wall.  And I have no idea whether the organist practices medieval hymns with his star choral soloist at 9am every morning for the benefit of penny-pinching tourists, but the pair of them certainly added an additional air of serenity to my visit.

 

After breakfast back at the hostel I headed out to la Castille de Almodovar, 30 minutes from town.  It is a picture-book-perfect hill fort, rebuilt from ruins by the 12th Earl of Torravala in the 19th Century.  Undoubtedly an obsession bordering on mania, the project took his whole life and fortune, but the result is breathtaking.  It dominates the surrounding landscape with an Arthurian arrogance, and indeed was considered to be so utterly impregnable that when a 12th Century king faced a dangerous incoming horde, he sent his wife and family to Almodovar while he led the battle in the streets of Cordoba.  They say at the moment of his beheading in the battle, his queen awoke with a cry, and that every year on the 28th March her ghost can be seen walking the battlements of the castle on the anniversary of his death.  I didn’t see her myself, but then again, it wasn’t the 28th March.

 

What I did see, from the turret of the tallest tower, was a lake in the distance of a startling bright blue.  So having ticked my traditional box from where I stood (there was something tall and imposing, and I had stood on top of it) I decided to tick another box I’ve been jonesing to tick on this trip: to amble for miles through unmarked olive groves and swim in a lake.  The street signs in Cordoba that evening said 37 degrees at 7pm, so at 2 when I set out I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been well past forty, but the walk was blissfully liberating despite the heat.  The reservoir was entirely deserted for miles in every direction, and if the walk had been liberating, stripping off and skinnydipping in the cool water for half an hour was joyful.

 

The 6km walk back and the bus ride back to town earned me my evening treat: two hours in the icy cold, relaxingly warm, and soporifically hot waters of the Arabic Baths of Hamman and a much-needed (and excellent) massage.  This was an entirely new experience and well worth the £35, but I can’t wait for the real thing in Istanbul.

 

Today (#6, Tues 10th) has passed uneventfully after yesterday’s exertions.  Late start and having discovered the cathedral’s Visitor Centre was closed I spent four hours wandering the parish of San Pedro, looking for the non-tourist Cordoba and finding it largely unimpressive and mainly closed.  Ended up practically having to run with my pack to catch the 3.30 bus (after the terrible lunch about which I began, not fun!) but now three hours and some typing later I find myself in the much larger and so far, much less attractive and more interchangeable Granada.  But this 100-berth hostel seems friendly and professional and tonight’s entertainment is a flamenco show in the caves under the Alhambra, so maybe the day’s just getting started!