Where’s Megan?

Spain is divided into several distict regions. Madrid is in Castilla, Barcelona is in Catalonia (and has its own language, Catalan), and the area in the southwest of Spain, where I spent my last week or so, known as Andalucia.

From Madrid I headed south through La Mancha (yes, where “The Man” is of). Plenty of beautiful scenery, but 4 hours of olive groves does, in fact, get old after a while.

I spent a few days in Cordoba, which is slightly less-touristy than it´s neighbor Sevilla, and has pleasantly twisting streets, a couple attractions, and a May festival going on.

And more ham:

Unlike in Barcelona when I stupidly did not book ahead, this time I stupidly DID book ahead, and ended up reserving a hotel room. To my credit, it was the cheapest lodging I could find online, but still a huge splurge and was the ultimate of luxury compared to my hostel lifestyle.

So what´s in Cordoba? The Mezquita, an enormous Mosque/Cathedral that has changed hands between the Muslim and Christian rulers over time, and definitely shows it:

I managed to entirely miss the May festival, but empty fairgrounds are somewhat interesting, I guess..

Hey, here are some people!

Next stop, Ronda, one of the White Towns of Andalucia perched on top a hill and spanning a gorge. It was incredibly scenic. I took a LOT of pictures.

They also had a bullfighting arena, one of the oldest in Spain (or anywhere, I presume):

and a Wine Museum, which, despite its fancy brochures in different languages, turned out to be nothing more than 10 rooms with posters, in Spanish only.

Pretty uninspiring. But on the plus side, I did get to sample 5 wines from Andalucia, and since I was strangely the only person there, the owner personally explained each one (in Spanish, of course).

I also took a walk down through the olive groves, but they weren´t in season so I couldn´t eat any.

But I have eaten a lot of oranges, which are everywhere and definitely in season:

And, now I´m in Algeciras, on the southern tip of Spain, waiting to take a ferry to Morocco in the morning. I´ve learned my lesson with hotel rooms… unless it´s a big city in peak season, just wait until you arrive and look for a “pension”, a small, basic hotel with usually shared bathroom. My room here is about $15 with a private bathroom, which is less than I pay for hostel beds.The rooms are old but clean, and I get to practice my Spanish with the managers. Now on to an Arabic/French speaking country!

Tags: Andalucia, Cordoba, Spain, Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.