Friday, November 21, 2025
Ants! It wouldn’t be a picnic without ‘em. Yesterday we saw around 10 ants in our room, including - ugh! - one on the bed. They were very tiny, but still . . .
I gave the snacks we brought with us to the receptionist and asked if she could keep them in a refrigerator. (We didn’t have one in our room. It was very minimalist, remember?)
This morning the ants were back, with their “plus ones tens”. They were all over my night table. A few more on the bed. On the lamp. On the wall. Lots in the bathroom. I talked to the owner about it. He said they are hard to get rid of. He said they are going to do something about it in January when they are closed for a few weeks. He didn’t propose doing anything now. He didn’t propose a room on the upper level. He didn’t propose a price adjustment. I was not a happy picnicker.
We had a tour this morning, so we quickly put everything back into our suitcases, zipped them up, and put them on that little table in our room. Then we tried to kill as many of those little buggers as we could.
This was really not acceptable. This was not a Motel 6, but a boutique hotel with excellent reviews. I don’t know what other hotels do, but they do something, because we never see ants at other hotels.
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Besides the patios, C贸rdoba is famous for two other things: the Jewish Quarter and the Mezquita (Mosque). Our walking tour of these two places was booked through Viator. It was 2.5 hours, which was just about right. They provided listening devices, which make a tour so much better. I do recommend it.
The Jewish Quarter (Juder铆a) is a maze of gates, sharp turns, and narrow passages, well-designed for self-defense. It is the neighborhood inhabited by Jews during the 8th to 12th Centuries - the Golden Age of Sephardic Jews under Muslim rule - when C贸rdoba was a seat of Jewish learning and scholarship. For the Jews, persecution, massacres (1391), and expulsion from Spain (1492) came later. There is no significant Jewish community in C贸rdoba today.
The Juder铆a includes several sights of general interest, such as a bullfighting museum, Arab baths, and a museum of Andalusian life. We did not visit any of them, but our guide talked about a few of them. As far as I can tell, there are only three things in the Jewish Quarter of Jewish importance: the Maimonides statue, the synagogue, and a museum of Sephardic (Jewish) life. We visited the first two on our tour.
Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides) was born in C贸rdoba in 1135 (or possibly in 1138). His family was exiled from Spain in 1148 after they refused to convert to Islam. For the next twenty years he lived in Fez, Acre, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Cairo. He settled in Fustat (which later was absorbed into Cairo), where he died in 1204. Apparently, he never returned to Spain, but C贸rdoba seems very proud of him.
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| Statue of Maimonides in Maimonides Plaza |
Maimonides was a rabbi, scholar, astronomer, philosopher, and physician. He was a prolific writer. His works on Jewish law and ethics are still studied today and he is regarded as an authority on these subjects.
The Hebrew word for Spain or Iberia was Sefarad or Sepharad.
“Sephardic” refers to the Jews who lived in Iberia in the centuries prior to the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. An organization called Red de Juder铆as was created in 1995 to preserve the architectural, historical, cultural and artistic legacy of Sephardic Jews. The members of the organization are cities which have a medieval Jewish Quarter. The organization places plaques like the one shown below in places that have a connection to a former Jewish community in Spain or Portugal.
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Plaque located in Maimonides Plaza
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I have seen a few plaques that do not refer to Red de Juder铆as or Caminos de Sefarad, and I wonder if they were placed by some other group. Hebrew letters in the shape of the Iberian peninsula spell the word “Sefarad.”We also stopped at the synagogue, completed in 1315, and used as a synagogue until 1492. It is the only surviving synagogue in C贸rdoba. The design looks very Islamic. Until you notice the Hebrew lettering carved into the stone. This style of architecture is called Mud茅jar. It is usually exemplified by the application of Islamic designs and motifs to Christian architecture, but perhaps the better description is Non-Islamic architecture.
It was a small space, with an even smaller gallery upstairs, for the women, presumably.
At this point we had a short break in our tour and then regrouped outside the Mosque-Cathedral of C贸rdoba, also known as the Mezquita. Our guide was so helpful during this portion of the tour. It could have been very confusing without someone to provide some history and context, and we would have missed so many interesting details.
The original mosque was completed in the 8th Century. (There may have been a Visigothic Christian church on this site before the mosque.) As C贸rdoba’s Muslim community, and C贸rdoba itself grew, the mosque was expanded three times. Our guide showed us a a diagram that helped us to understand the size and location of each addition. She also shared some fascinating insights into the subtle differences in each addition.  |
| A formidable wall surrounds the mosque and patio |
You enter through the patio, or courtyard, where oranges trees provide shade and a pleasant fragrance. Muslims used this space for ritual washing before prayer.
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| Floor plan from CUNY Academic Commons |
The pink section, along with part of the patio, was built in the 8th Century. The green section was built in the 9th Century. The blue section followed in the 10th Century. It was not practical to keep going in a southerly direction, so the fourth section was added to the eastern side in the late 10th Century to make the building square, and the patio was expanded.The first thing you notice upon entering is a multitude of red-and-white-striped arches, supported on columns. It is totally spellbinding.
The columns are all different, and you can pick out different styles of capitals. This is because they were “recycled” from various Roman ruins. There are estimated to be 1,250 columns in the mosque.
The Roman-style arches are made from red bricks and white stone. This provides more flexibility in the event of an earthquake. If you look carefully, you will discover that these arches are actually double arches. This method of construction allows for a higher roof when taller columns are not available or practical.
Different types of arches start to appear in later expansions of the mosque. Horseshoe arches are very common in Islamic architecture. There are many lobed and scalloped arches in the newer sections of the mosque. Above, we can see a scalloped horseshoe arch with painted red stripes. The horseshoe shape increased the stability, so they didn’t need the brick stripes, but they painted them on to preserve a uniform look.
More photos of the inside of the mosque:
The Mezquita, like the Alhambra, could have easily been destroyed during the Reconquista, but it wasn’t. Its time as an Islamic house of worship did come to an abrupt end, however. The Catholics who took over quickly figured out that they could build a perfectly good cathedral inside of the mosque, and it would no longer be a mosque. Now the mosque was part of a cathedral.
How did they do it with 13th-Century construction methods? I’m not sure, but it is an impressive cathedral, and it is still being used - for a cathedral. Security guards will prevent Muslims from praying inside the structure.
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| Of course there is an organ |
So, in one day, a synagogue, a mosque, and a cathedral. We could have gone to the remains of a Roman temple in Cordoba with a little more planning. 馃悳馃悳馃悳馃悳 馃悳馃悳馃悳馃悳 馃悳馃悳馃悳馃悳
Shirley, a reader, wants to know how the plants in the patios are watered. Good question! One of the hostesses showed us. She had a long, lightweight pole - maybe 6 feet? - maybe bamboo. There was a small can attached to one end of it. A string was attached to the can. They would dip the can into a well or a bucket to fill it up. Then they would lift it up to a flower out and pull the string. The can would tip over, and - Voila! - the plant is watered. Low-tech gets the job done.
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Today’s fabric is “The Anteater Next Door” by charladraws for Spoonflower.
