It was finally time for us to leave Madrid and we were going to do something very exciting: take the train! It would have been cheaper to take the bus, but I am an American and have an intense jealousy of well-developed high-speed rail networks and therefore wanted to take the train. We woke up and packed and got some pastries for breakfast and then off we were to the absolutely gorgeous Atocha Train Station. The only slight hiccup was actually finding the door but that wouldn’t be a problem twice.

Boarding the train went super smooth and let me tell you so did the ride. My super amazing wife has lots of experiences on high-speed trains but this was my first and I was over the moon at how smooth it was and how fast we were going. At one point I downloaded a GPS speedometer app to see how fast we were going and at that moment we were going 165 miles per hour which might be a personal landspeed record. Wild. But the landscape. Lots of rolling hills and fields just south of Madrid and for the rest of the day. And lots and lots of olive trees. These Spaniards really like their olive trees. Close to Madrid they were in regular orchards but as we got farther south and the land got hillier the trees got less regular. It wasn’t clear to me if they were really still olive trees (but what else would they be?) or if they were regularly harvested. Interspersed with the olive groves were I think hay fields though it was hard to tell, it was just short and green. I also spotted a big solar farm which I loved and the rivers we passed were like, meandering and split into small streams all over the place.

One thing that really impressed us is that we kept passing ruins that when I looked them up on Google Maps were just like, castles??? Out in the middle of nowhere and just sitting there??? Europe man, I guess it really is old. The names I looked up were: Castillo Almonacid de Toledo, Torre de Azuqueca o la Torrecilla, and Castillo de las Guadalerzas. There might have been more but naming every castle in Spain would take a while probably. As we got further south the landscape opened up into like, proper valleys and we were very excited to see sheep. Tell you what I see in art museums these pieces from people’s grand tours and they have like, sheep hanging out in and amongst ruins and groves and I thought it was a fantasy setting but here we are and that is what I saw! It is real! This is like Europeans seeing yellow school busses. The valleys we saw had like arched valleys and dirt roads and pine trees as we travelled through tunnels. It is wild and phenomenal.

Having been transported through a fantasy land we now arrived at our fantasy city: Córdoba! We got ourselves to our accommodations which were right downtown a block from the river (we could see the Mezquita from the porch), and then pretty much dropped off our bags and got to talking through the city. It was a startling difference from Madrid. We were there in February and in Madrid it felt like February. But in Córdoba it was sunny and beautiful and warm. My favorite part was that the streets are lined with orange trees, which is something every city should do. The architecture is ancient and the walls white-washed and the streets narrow and curvy and beautiful. Occasionally cars come by (in the morning when the delivery trucks go through I spotted a traffic jam that happened when one of the drivers popped into a shop for a pastry, leaving his car in the middle of the street) but not many. And these Spanish roof tiles! On the train I could look out across the landscape and see like authentic old Spanish ruins with the tiles, little country houses, just to die for. And in the city there were also old tiles with moss on them, just picture-perfect.

We strolled past the Mezquita into the old Christian neighborhood (I think) outside the old city walls and then came back in and checked out some small gift shops where we got some trinkets. We walked across the Roman bridge (nice to see long-term infrastructure investment!) and poked around the other side. At the terminus of the bridge is a tower which houses the “Museum of life in Andalusia.” I dragged us in because I thought it would tell the story of the tower or something but not really. It is a little weird. A meandering audio guide tries to give you a flavor of “east meets west” Andalusia life that maybe lands better in Spanish. But you can go to the top of the tower for the view which is worth the price of admission:

Views taken in, it was back across the bridge and more wandering. We went up to the Callaje de las Flores which didn’t have so many flores at the time but was pretty. There was a leatherworking shop with cool stuff I couldn’t afford. After that we got some gelato, swung by an old book shop by the river, and went out for a dinner which was just sublime. We got anchovies in vinegar for a starter, followed by cod with oranges which is a local dish and a stunningly good combination (little pieces of cod and red onion on top of orange slices, with some smokily delicious olives), and then octopus slices on potatoes and finally oxtail stew with fries in it and man that was good. From there we got some churros for dessert and called it a night, excited in our first full day in Andalusia.