Cordoba!

Well my internet has to decided to pull a Hal 3000 from ¨2001 A Space Odyssey¨ and decided to revolt against me, so I´m typing this from an overpriced Internet cafe with computers that barely work too. Again, you can´t have everything working perfectly.

Ok so this past weekend was a busy busy one. We went to the city of Cordoba on Friday. Cordoba at one time the largest city in the Western world and was a stronghold in Medieval times. Pretty freaking cool if you ask me, then again I like history. Cordoba is famous for the Great Mosque or the Mezquita, pronounced Mesquite. The mosque was also one of the largest in the world at one time, with around 990 columns. To me, Arab design in the Mosque is a little more asthetically pleasing than some of the gaudy Baroque stuff. The Arabs in the Mosque used floral patterns and geometric designs because they did not believe in having images. It´s a very open space, however in the 15th century a king of Spain who honeymooned in both Granada and Cordoba wanted some cathedrals and well they took out part of the Mezquita so in the middle of the mosque is a cathedral. The king was appalled at the destruction of part of the mosque because understood the design and beauty that the Moors put into it.

After the tour of the mosque, we walked around the very ancient city and looked at other sites in Cordoba.

Part two of the weekend consisted of a tour of the La Giralda Cathedral and the Real Alcazar in Sevilla. We got to go to the top of the bell tower of the La Giralda which is a former Arab minaret that the Christians converted into a bell tower. Such a spectacular view! The cathedral it´s self was mindblowingly large and full of gold and silver. Another interesting thing to see in the cathedral is some of the remains of Christopher Columbus. You might have heard of him and his voyages or perhaps the holiday named for him.

On to the Alcazar, the Alcazar was a former Moorish castle turned into Royal Palace used by the Royal family of Spain. It´s the Sevilla residence of the King and Queen of Spain. The Alcazar has some of the most spectacular gardens I have ever seen. In the alcazar were tapestries, gold everywhere, just very Old World mixed with Moorish design.

Now for the relaxing part of my weekend. I went out to the club again with the horde of Tech students to a club called Buddha, one the way there we befriended, Arvid from Sweden, Georgia from Serbia, Emil from Hungary, Annie from Hanover, Germany and some other girls from Berlin. It´s amazing to talk with people from Europe and realize just how cool they are to talk too.

No weekend is ever the same.