Cordoba and the return to Cadiz 1/30/09

I woke up refreshed for the first time. I got ready, and went down to eat breakfast. I ran into my group, and they told me they went back to the playground and had an interesting experience. While they were riding the see-saw, climbing the jungle gym, etc… some locals walked by and were laughing at them. One of them grabbed an orange off of a tree and threw it at them..hahahahah. Then, they ran off as fast as they could. I told my group they probably said, “Turistas!” before they ran off, and we laughed about it for a while.

We didn’t have too much time in Cordoba, so our tour moved very quickly from monument to monument. The highlight was definitely the Mezquita, or the old mosque. We got our tickets and walked inside. I was instantaneously amazed. The inside was a picture I had seen in every history and art book in middle and high school. There was a huge hall, with double arches made of two different types of stone. Again, it’s so hard to describe, so check out my pics under Cordoba on my website. It was fairly dark inside though, and taking pictures was quite difficult. So, I used the pillars as a tripod, and balanced my camera sideways along the pillars, which worked perfectly. After a long tour and history lesson of the Mezquita, we emerged into sunlight once again. We got a little bit of free time, so a group of us ventured into the shops to pick up a few souvenirs. None of us ended up buying anything, though, cuz it was REALLY expensive. One T-shirt cost 13 euros (~15 dollars), and one postcard cost about 1 euro. We also some pretty interesting and messed up items on sale in the shops. For example, one shop was selling bottles of Absinth, which ranged from 70% alcohol to 85% alcohol. This drink is actually illegal in the US, and a few popular movies have shown people drinking it and hallucinating. But there was a whole shelf of just Absinth in a few shops, which was very interesting. It didn’t look like it was being sold very often.

We piled onto the buses, fairly exhausted from an extensive walking tour and returned to the hotel for lunch. Lunch was even worse than dinner the previous day, as far as vegetarian options go, so Achal and I ended up eating a lot of bread and yoghurt…oh and French Fries as well. After lunch, we said goodbye to Cordoba and started the drive back to Cadiz. I was sitting with my group, but had an empty seat next to me. A girl that was on another trip which was continuing to Granada had gotten sick, so she had to return to Cadiz on our bus. So, we had an extra passenger, so there would be no empty seats. A Lifelong learner (older students who are on the voyage with the college crowd) came and sat next to me, and introduced herself as Pamela. We ended up talking for the duration of the bus ride home, which took about 3.5 hours. I had a great time talking to someone who was older, and getting her perspective of the voyage so far.

We finally arrive back to Cadiz around sunset, and I went to my room. I downloaded all my pictures and videos to my hard drive, ate dinner, and then a few of us (Achal, Sonya, and I) set out with our laptops to access the free wifi and upload pictures, go on Skype, etc… Right when we walked off the ship it started raining. We were pretty pissed off. There was a small terminal near our port that was rumored to have wifi, so we went there. After about 10 minutes of fiddling around with the connection, none of us could get on the wifi. By now, it had stopped raining, but the clouds still looked threatening. I decided I really wanted to go on the internet since I had nothing else to do at the time, so I was ready to walk to the city center to get on the wifi network. The others soon agreed, and we quickly walked toward downtown Cadiz. And once again, we got lost. I swear, it is almost impossible to navigate the city. Finally, we found the plaza with wifi. But all the chairs and tables had been put away due to the rain. We walked desperately into the Ben and Jerry’s, and asked if we could sit inside and access the wifi. They said they were closing soon so..no podemos (we couldn’t). So…we ventured back into the plaza, and looked around for a place that was semi-sheltered (it was still drizzling). We finally saw the cathedral steps, and decided to set up camp there. So, we walked as far up the steps as possible, until we were sitting against the huge doors to the cathedral. I took off my jacket and wrapped it around my laptop to make it water-proof. It was pretty hilarious, since all 3 of us, were huddled against the cathedral with jackets around our laptops. People who were walking by were all staring at us.

I checked my email, and signed on to AIM. Akshay IM’d me right away, and I chatted with him and Hemang for a bit. Then I decided to try out Skype to call landlines. I purchased $10 of credit, and called home. It worked really well, and cost me $0.02 a minute. I called several family members, and heard their voices for the first time in over a week. It was really nice. I talked for a long time, and used about $0.60 total! I was pretty happy, cuz my calling card didn’t live up to its expectations of low rates…lol. I was going to make a few more calls to friends in Boston (yeah, Akshay and Hemang, I didn’t forget you guys were still on Aim waiting for me) but the connection got really slow, and stopped working, which bummed me out. We all packed up our stuff, and left. After getting back, Achal and I were pretty hungry so we left again to go grab dinner at the same place that we went the first night. We were joined by Achal’s roommate Z. On the way to the restaurant, he was complaining that he was disappointed with Spanish food so far. We told him this restaurant was amazing. We arrived and waited a few minutes for a seat at the bar. We ordered some drinks (I decided to be really risky and tried the Spanish Sprite), and our food. We shared our story about the mysterious moving platform with Z, and got another good laugh out if it. Finally, our food was ready, and I devoured my meal. Z thought the food was amazing and thanked us for bringing him. Afterwards, we headed back to the ship. I passed out soon on the ship, not believing that we only had one more day in Spain.