Córdoba

Córdoba was a spur of the moment trip and very quickly planned out. My friend, Shannon, said she really wanted to go, but no one to go with. So right then and there we booked our hostel and bought bus tickets that night (Wednesday). So Saturday rolls around and we leave in the morning to go to Córdoba. We get there too early to check in so we decided to roam the city and go eat our sack lunch by the river. On the way we run into the Catedral that the city is basically known for, and an attraction we came to see. And by sheer dumb luck we happened to book a hostel within 5 minutes of the Catedral and pretty close to the bus station. We did not put any effort into planning our trip until late Friday night when we decided to Google where our hostel was located in reference to the bus station.

Now all of Spain is beautiful, but I think Córdoba is the prettiest I have seen thus far. It´s gorgeous. It´s nice to get somewhat away from the city feel and Córdoba was less city and more spread out and spacious. Kids had parks to go to with fountains and real grass. Some streets were 6 lanes wide all together which is unheard of in Granada. It has a very nice, relaxing feel to the city. Again, it was a beautiful day with the sun and cloudless sky. I did not take next to any pictures of Córdoba because it gets tiring taking pictures of everything. This was a mini vacation from tourism.

Saturday was relaxing, but Sunday was my favorite for one reason...we went to the ZOO!! This zoo is a lot smaller than even the Des Moines zoo, but it was still really neat. They of course had lions and tigers and bears, ____________! You fill in the blank. But! They also had elephants, donkeys, wolves, eagles, monkeys, zebras, deer, porcupines, emus, a hippo...wait what? They had deer?? Yup, it was definitely a strange sight that they had deer an an exhibit. In Iowa we hunt them, we look for them in wooded areas, we hit them with our cars, why would people care to see them? Oh right, they don´t really exist in Spain. We Iowans take them for granted apparently. They also had this animal called a mara. This is such a strange animal because it is from the rodent family, but it has the body shape of a pic (but furry), a face like a bunny, and legs like a deer. According to wikipedia,  maras may amble, hop in a rabbit-like fashion, gallop, or bounce on all fours. They are a weird little animal, but they are cute! The zoo was a lot of fun, especially in the morning when no one was there. At about noon, it started picking up with families and their kids. However, I did not mind, cause there were a lot of cute looking kids!

Córdoba wasn´t too exciting , but that´s perfectly fine because that wasn´t it´s purpose. It was a very relaxing and calming weekend in a beautiful city, with a good friend. I enjoyed it very much.