Perfect timing in San Sebastián, Logroño, and Cordoba: Tues., Aug. 27

Like I mentioned, we had a 6:15 alarm to head to the car by 6:45 to be on the road by 7. We made it out the door, but navigating the one-way streets around the apartment was tricky, so it was more like 7:15 by the time we grabbed the bags and toast and left the apartment. 

I had looked up the route on my phone and corroborated it was the route on the GPS, and things looked right. It went south, curving to the east a bit before avoiding a town and then going west to get to Logroño.

It was only after about thirty minutes of driving, when Rosie asked if we were on track, that I confidently said yes, we were headed to Pamplona, only to be informed the GPS directions had veered us off that path and on to another highway. 

So I looked a bit closer. I had set the GPS to no tollroads (they had seemed easily avoidable before) and it put us up and over a mountain in a national park to avoid going near Pamplona and what must be a tollroads. My iPhone map confirmed (Google maps caches, so it is easy to scroll around and store a map while online to access offline - as long as you are online at some point). Well, we had deviated too far from taking the toll route anyway, so up and over the mountain it was.

I'm so impressed with Rosie. I could tell she was stressed, since our ETA was slowly increasing to 9:30 (with our train at 10) while we were creeping over the mountain. And there was fog, and narrow roads, and cows. I was freaked out that we weren't going to make it, and I was just a passenger.

After what felt like forever, we started descending, and after another forever, we made it back onto a highway. We were at 9:35 ETA now and still had to do a gas fill-up. 

There was a gas station a few miles before the town, and right off the road, so we pulled over, and, using the skills we had learned at our fill-up two days ago, twisted the gas cap open with the car key and filled it up. 

We found the train station pretty easily, but the parking lot had a separate entrance. We pulled into a spot (all of the Avis ones were taken) and grabbed our stuff to take it into the office. 

If one thing hadn't worked - finding the entrance, the man in front of us taking a minute longer, the inspection finding something, really, anything - we wouldn't have made the train. As it was, I had sent Rosie ahead so she could stand in the doorway as I was trying to finish up the transaction. We still aren't sure who's credit card ultimately got charged - it had to be reserved with Rosie's, but we wanted to switch to mine since it was in euros - because I bolted out of the office while it was still processing. I raced down the escalator and into the closest open door, waving at Rosie a few doors down to jump in. 

We hiked all the way to the front of the train, where our seats were the ones right behind the conductor. And with that, hearts beating rapidly from the stress and the exertion, we sank into our cool, mechanized chairs to fall asleep for a few hours. 

Rosie ate the cucumber, I ate the carrot, after I had super vivid dreams of eating cheese puffs. (Hey Dan, interpret that dream.) We had been stopped for a while, with an alarm going off and men in safety vests wandering the train (which I easily incorporated into my dream and slept through), so I wasn't sure if we'd be on time for our station at Córdoba, but indeed, we were even a few minutes early. Maybe it was the 199 km/hr the train was going!

At the station, we bought our tickets for tomorrow (Córdoba to Sevilla) and for Friday (Sevilla to Madrid). Then it was an easy, though hot and sweaty, walk to our hostel. 

It is called Córdoba Bed and Be, with the "be" also standing for bicycle. And it is great. José (who I thought was Hussein when I first heard it) greeted us, gave us an orientation on a map, helped us carry our slightly lighter load up the stairs (we accidentally left the two bottles we bought from the Spanish-only wine tour we did on the train - they were basically bought just to pay for the tastings we did anyway). All in all, great intro to the city. He even told us a place to get some savory snacks for lunch after we freshened up, even though we were right in the middle of siesta. 

At La Tortuga ("The Turtle"), I was trying to ask when "nuece" was in English and ended up ordering the "Roquefort y nuece" pastry, which we deliciously shared. It's walnuts!

We both scouted the map and Rick Steves. This map is a cool concept - called "Use-It", it is sponsored by the EU and three students helped make it for Córdoba, the first city in Spain to have it. We've been loving it so far!

One of things on the map was a bike tapas tour, so we had to be back at the hostel at 9pm for that. Since we would be around the Old City and Jewish Quarter tomorrow, I proposed we head northwest to Palacio de Viana. 

We wound our way on the streets, stopping at a few plazas and buildings to read about them. When we got to the Palacio, it was closed for siesta and would reopen at seven, in one hour. 

So we started by wandering. We checked out a garden with a sculpture dedicated to the beautiful women of Córdoba. My theory is that non-beautiful women get turned into white pigeons, since I've seen more here than all other cities combined!

When we sat down to do some recon, we found a recommended shop with some more unique items (not just the standard stamped and painted in China stuff in other shops). I found great posters of patios to hang in my bathroom!

As we read and heard, Córdoba is known for their patios and their patios festival in May to pick the most picturesque. The Palacio has twelve connecting patios, and I think I took a picture of Rosie in basically all of them, when we got there at a bit past seven. 

Some were themed after a specific plant (the Patio of the Orange Trees), some after sculptures (the Patio of the Madama), and some just had sweet walls or pots or hedges or really anything fresh and green. 

All of them had great posing opportunities.

And Rosie's dress looked great among the foliage. 

We wound our way through the cute residential streets, only getting stuck in one dead end. But we made it back to our street (José Cruz, but we call it José Cuervo) and the cremeria that was there to fill a very persistent need. 

We made it to the hostel just in time for the bike tour. Javiér, our guide, introduced us to the Old City, which was great to see via bike. 

He only took us to two tapas places. The first was the markers of the largest (thickest) "tortilla" - potato and egg omelette, which we had with salmorejo, their delicious and creamier version of gazpacho. I love it. That and the wine with a lemon soda in it to make it slightly like a wine spritzer/cooler thing. And we drank it right out the mesquites. 

Chatting with the people on the tour, two were French-Canadian and two were economics students from Germany that are staying in the hostel until they can find a place to live. All were nice, and we shared some good cultural and life stories. 

Next was in the Jewish corridor, a place called Bicyclette. Sangrias and cheese for the North Americans, just sangria for the Germans. 

While we were noshing on our cheese plate, we talked through siesta and what that means for schools, etc. We some how made it onto the the topic of reality television shows after we had gotten some good advice on Sevilla. 

It was simply a ride back to the hostel and a group picture with us doing "nose goes" (something I had subconsciously done with the last of the cheese plate and had to explain) that'll be posted on Córdoba Bed and Be. Might even be there now!