After 13 days in Portugal we headed back into Spain. While we enjoyed our time in Portugal and had some good experiences, some countries resonate with you and others don’t. Spain resonates with us more than Portugal so we feel almost at home now that we are back in Spain.

On our first trip to Spain we had very reluctantly cut Cordoba out of the trip due to time constraints. When I was looking at the map last night Cordoba was an easy days drive away, so we were both excited to add it to the trip.

The other good thing about going from the Algarve in Portugal to Cordoba is you pass thru Seville which has a Costco. We had visited the Costco in Seville last time we visited Spain so we stopped in again. The problem with Costco when you have a little camper is finding a place for everything we would have liked to buy. As we walked around we reluctantly left a few things on the shelf because we didn’t think they would fit. Despite that we still ran up the biggest grocery bill of the trip. But now we have a nice combination of favorite things from home and interesting Costco European items, and in the case of some of the dry goods enough for the rest of this trip and part of the next.

We arrived in Cordoba about 4pm and initially headed to a reasonably priced aire, but when we got there we realized it was way out of town, and the bus connections were sporadic. So we decided to bite the bullet and head to the aire in the city center. It is conveniently located 5 minutes from the old town, but is outrageously priced. On this trip this is the second most we have payed to stay somewhere and for the cost we get absolutely nothing but a parking spot, no electricity, no water, nothing but a good location.

I told Ton we should head into the town for a quick look around and she somewhat reluctantly agreed to join me. But 5 minutes into the walk I new that Cordoba had hooked her. Every 5o yards she was off taking a photo of something. She was really in the zone and completely enjoying herself. It is a special town.

We spent a couple of hours just wandering alleys in the old town. We spent a lot of the time in the old Jewish quarter and visited the Synagogue which is from the 1300’s. In 1492 the Jews were expelled from Spain and for the next 450 years it was used for many other functions before being restored in the 1950’s. After a while we decided to head over to the UNESCO world heritage site Cathedral/Mosque to see where it is located. Tomorrow we have a ticket to visit the interior of the Cathedral/Mosque but it is very impressive from the outside.


While the streets of old town Cordoba are obviously catering primarily to tourists, they do it in a way that does not detract from the history and atmosphere of the city. The French and the Spanish seem to do this very well. We are really looking forward to continuing our visit tomorrow.