Sevilla Day 3 and Cordoba

On Sunday in Sevilla, everything is CLOSED. Unfortunately we were completely unaware of this fact. For breakfast we walked to this Panderia (bread shop) and bought some delicious sweet bread and two medium loaves of bread for dinner. The whole thing only cost us 3,80€ (bread in Spain is a million times cheaper than in the US). After enjoying our bread on the roof top terrace we headed out with the intention of starting in Plaza de America and going to the art museum.

in front of a fountain in
Plaza de America

A building with famous Spanish
people on top of it!

On the way there, I started to not feel good (I got a stomach virus). But we kept trudging along. We asked the lady in the tourist information center where the nearest bathroom was and she told us there was once inside Maria Louisa park. So we headed into the park thinking it was right inside the gate. We asked a person working in the park where it was and they gave us some "directions." After walking around for what seemed like an eternity, we still couldn't find a bathroom and had ended up at Plaza España again! So we sat down, regrouped and decided to pick a different direction and finally we made it to Plaza de America where we discovered that the Art Museum was closed. So instead we took some pictures and headed back toward the cathedral defeated. We stopped in Cafe y Te and had a little lunch, then just walked back to the hostel. EVERYTHING was legitimately closed. It was very depressing. So back in the hostel we just chilled in the common room doing HW. For dinner we ate the meat Katie's señora had given us, along with the fresh bread we had bought that morning. It was a good, easy dinner.

On Monday morning we checked out of the hostel and headed on the train to Cordoba. Once in Cordoba we dropped our suitcases off at the bus station (since they had lockers), and took the city bus down to the historic center of the city.

On top of the scary tower!

When we got there we walked to the Alcazar de los Reyes Catolicos (or Castle of the Catholic Kings). We explored around there, the gardens, the inside of the palace, then decided to go up to one of the towers. It was the scariest winding staircase ever! Not good for a girl with horrible depth perception. But we made it up and back down without dying (though I swear we were close of the way down).  After we finished exploring the gardens we decided it was time for lunch. But before we got something to eat we walked across the Roman bridge and took a few pictures (of course).

We ended up in a restaurant that was SUPER busy. I ordered a Spanish omelet; it was delicious but I couldn't finish it because I didn't feel good. After that we went to the Mezquita (or Mosque). The mosque in Cordoba is a Catholic cathedral within an Islamic mosque. It's incredibly beautiful, with an amazing history. They had to completely reconstruct different parts of it in order for people to use it again, and I must say that they did a fantastic job.  We spend about 2 hours just walking around the mosque (it is HUGE).

Inside the Mezquita!

After that we didn't really have anything else we really wanted to do so we tried to find the Jewish synagog. Unfortunately the map was really hard to read so we ended up walking in circles and never did end up finding the synagog. Once we had given up on that, we noticed that there were some grey clouds in the sky and that it was getting close to the time we needed to start heading back to the train station. So we walked to where the bus had dropped us off, and it started to rain. Then a local told us that if we wanted to go back to the bus station we didn't want to catch the bus at that stop because it has to make some crazy loop on the other side of the river before it goes to the bus station. So he gave us directions to the correct stop, and eventually the bus came and brought us back to the bus station. Finally we were on our way home. It was a great weekend, but boy was it long and tiring!