Ronda

:) :) :) ronda was the most beautiful city i've ever seen.  ronda rondaaaaa i love you.  i spent most of my time there in the gorge being a monkey and swimming in the river, but the city too was enchanting. 

at the biggest plaza de toros in the world in ronda, their baby

the best part of the gorge was we kept finding these random arabic looking ruins everywhere--spaniards are just so desensitized to this stuff.

Italica

2500 year old city of Roman ruins...

Ampitheater, near the pit where they would throw the dead bodies-- people and animals.  this theater is actually much bigger than it looks, because 1- it's sunken into itself over the years and 2-  franco's regime stripped all the marble off of it in the 30s.  

italica really was an incredible experience but to be honest i wrote a paper about it already and don't have an ounce more will to write more about it. 

sierras, extremadura

this past week i went with javier and his family to his mountain refuge that he just finished building up in the mountains of extremadura.  the land of the refuge sat over a tiny spanish pueblo that sandra and javier described as representative of the "spain of their childhoods"... i was confused about what this meant until i actually visited.  the fact is that spain changed and westernized so quickly after it was made into a democracy in 1975 that anyone 35 years or older can remember a much different country.  these tiny mountain pueblos have simply not americanized like the cities of spain have at all.  needless to say, in this tiny, red roofed old village i was stared at endlessly.  an old man asked where i was from and when i said i was american he replied, "latin america?"  i laughed a little and said "no no, soy de los estados unidos," and he thought a second and said "veo...entonces, porque hablas espanol?"  he didn't understand why an american would learn spanish.  that is how different these two worlds are, and just getting a glimpse of this culture was certainly unlike anything i'd seen before.

further up the mountain, the green land goes on forever and you find yourself lost in the landscape, the animals both tame and wild, and the expansive blue sky.  the only sound i could hear was the constant low mumble of cow and goat bells. we ate figs from wild fig trees and collected mushrooms that we took home and fried up for dinner. 

some photos:

Cordoba, La Mezquita

dinosaur vs muhammad ;)

Cordoba is considered the historical capital of Spain.  The area was an established commercial center for the ancient Spanish Jews, the Pagan Romans, and the Catholic Visigoths.  When the Muslims conquered al-Andaluz in 711, they took made Cordoba their capital city, and built a grand Mosque to show the supreme power of God and the expanding religion.  What can I say about this mosque...it was unlike anything I've ever seen.  It didn't have the height of a Gothic European cathedral, but its size was pretty incredible. It was filled with high post-Roman arches and all the walls were inscripted with tiny detailed Arabic poetry, much of which was torn down during the Spanish inquisition.  In the center of the mosque there is a small cathedral actually built within the building.  There is one part where they had dug out a hole in the center of the floor in which you can see about 10 feet down ancient roman tiling about 2000 years old followed by Visigothic pillars 1500 years old followed by the ground beneath your feet 1200 years old surrounding the Catholic cathedral 500 years old-- literally sandwiched civilizations. I was falling in love all over the place.