We recently visited Córdoba over a long weekend having booked a room at the Hotel Conquistador for two nights. One of the most frightening experiences that I have ever had on a motorbike occurred when driving the bike down into the Hotel's underground car park!
It had just started to rain outside so my tyres were wet, having taken the contents of the bike's three panniers into the hotel, the reception opened the electric gate leading down into their car park and lifted a barrier towards the bottom of the ramp, with extreme caution I moved forward down a 45 degree incline about 20 feet long made of steel and at the bottom of this incline a concrete floor for about 10 feet and then a concrete wall and a 90 degree turn to the right. To keep my speed of descent to a minimum I started to descend using both brakes, until I realised that my speed was increasing but my wheels were no longer turning! 300 kilos of BMW were now accelerating fast but not with any guidance from me!
Visions of dropping the bike and it crashing onto the concrete floor at the bottom flashed through my mind. To regain traction I had to release both brakes and accelerate towards the concrete wall at the bottom of the ramp! Then stop as quickly as I could, very fortunately I got to the bottom and stopped the bike in an upright position just before reaching the wall.
Having parked the bike, I went up to the reception via a lift and noticed that my hands were still shaking as I signed the hotel's registration document!!
Córdoba was conquered by the Romans in 206 BC and a Temple was built there at the time of Julius Caesar, it was an important Roman town until towards the end of the 6th century when the Visigoths took over control. In 711 it was captured by a Berber army and it became a provincial capital under the Caliphate of Damascus. By 1000 AD Cordoba had a population of around 400,000. There is not too much left standing from the Roman period of Cordoba except for the bridge and a temple which you will see in the slide show to the right. Both the Visigoths and the Moors dismantled Roman buildings and built their own on top of them. |
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The Moors' Mosque or Mezquita was probably the largest and most beautiful in the Muslim world, second only perhaps to the Mosque in Damascus, it is lavishly decorated with carved marble, stucco and elaborate mosaics. There are a total of 856 columns of jasper, onyx, marble and granite used to support the roof, which were taken from the Roman temple and other Roman buildings that were on or close to this site. Following the Moors defeat in 1236 the destruction of the Mosque began but was stopped on the orders of the Chief Magistrate until it had been seen by the King. The King gave instructions for the demolition to stop and a decision was made to use the Mosque as Christian Cathedral. 300 years later in the 16th century a Cathedral was built in the centre of the Mosque which is as we see it today.
We enjoyed our stay in Cordoba, but as is often the case in southern Spain found it impossible to locate a restaurant where there was food that we liked. We were surprised by our hotel which has 4 stars giving us orange juice diluted with water! This we felt was a little strange as the surrounding country consists of 1000s of acres of orange groves.
Our ride back to Seville along the Guadalquivir valley (on the old road) was very beautiful consisting mainly of farms growing citrus fruits and wonderful views of unspoilt country, but with very few places where you could stop for coffee! We did stop and rode up a hill to one side of the road in order to park the bike and admire the few to the north of the Sierra Morena, as can be seen in the photograph above.
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