Thursday 26 May 2016
Córdoba is a serious party city! We arrived by high speed train from Seville during the middle of a local festival called the Feria. The lady at our B&B described it as a big party, but it isn't, it's a gargantuan party! The Feria site is located between the football ground (Córdoba United or Córdoba City, not sure which) and the Guadalquiver river. At the entrance is a huge gate in a blend of Christain and Islamic style called Mudejar, which is found in Andalusian castles and palaces.Strolling into the site were thousands of Cordobans dressed in traditional costume, like they had leapt off the label of a sherry bottle. The women were in long tight fitting dresses with elaborate frills, crimson lips and flowers in their hair. The men wore smart pinstripe trousers with high waists, short tailored jackets and broad brimmed flat hats, they are very very snappy dressers. Some of the children are dressed in costume like their parents, it's a great opportunity to show off.
The site is huge, about 750 metres square, and is full of pavilions set out in blocks like a small city. Parading round the avenues are people on horseback in costume,some of the ladies riding side saddle. Horses and carriages carry people around the site in a constant procession of colour and elegance, it is just so ridiculously Spanish!
Between the avenues are dozens of pavilions, and each one has loud music, and hundreds of people eating taps and drinking wine and beer. Some are like discos with loud whomping and dancing on the tables. Others have local traditional bands and choirs playing to enthusiastic audiences, some of them in matching costumes like football teams. Getting into the swing of things we had a cana of Cruzcampo cerveza and watched the band, while taking sneaky photos of the audience who were dancing like Catherine Zeta Jones in Zoro, looking stern and flourishing their arms like swatting invisible flies.
As well as the singing, dancing, eating, drinking and riding, there is a vast funfair with some truly nauseating looking rides. They looked more like a form of torture to me rather than anything I would consider fun. But the teenagers screamed and loved it as they should, their joi d'vivre shining from their grinning faces. One of the rides was a swinging arm with a dozen screamng teens at each end, it must have been fifty metres high and revolved at speed.
As we left at about 8pm, with yet more people were pouring into the Freria past rows of candy floss and hamburger stalls. We walked over the ancient Roman bridge back into the old city of Córdoba. The Mesquita dominates the city, it is an enormous mosque and after the victorybofmthe Christain Kings had a cathedral built inside of it. The streets of the old city are all narrow and the houses are painted white with iron grills over the windows, it is a magical looking place.
We dined at Doble le Cepe, a restaurant we had been recommended. The tapas were OK, but no better than those we ate at the bodega in Seville. It was very quiet since most of the city was at the Feria.
Monumental entrance to the Feria
Small boy on a big horse
Lucky me and some beautiful Cordoban ladies on the Roman bridge
