Spain 9/7

We made it - the Alcazar opens at 8.30 and we are at the gates ready and waiting. It is mercifully cool this morning, though another 40degree day is forecast. This one feels a bit different, less humid. The Alcazar de los Reyos Cristianos (Palace of the Christian Kings) is a well preserved 14th century palace which was used by various Christian Kings, then the Inquisition and finally as a prison until the 1950s. There are no signs of the prison life here. We spend a very pleasant hour wandering through the rooms, one of which contains some fabulous mosiacs which were found under the large plaza we visited yesterday. I love the way so many places are connected one to another in this way. And that we have been to them. This palace also contains Arabian baths which must have been wonderul to bathe in, in a shaded courtyard like small swimming pools but not as deep. Then the gardens, where you are never out of earshot of water - including small aqueducts running the length and breadth of the gardens. There are fountains and pools everywhere and long colonnades of trees. An avenue with orange trees on both sides was the shadiest place I have been in as the trees are grown and maintained to ensure that the pretty well shade the entire path at all times. Wonderful! The reason we rushed to the Alcazar is because we have tickets for the 1030 bus to Madinat Al-Zhara, ruins of a small town built in the 10th century by the local potentate to display and assert his power and authority. Only about 10% of the city has been excavated, and that is of course still going on around the tourists. Before we get there however there are a couple of things to do - our prepaid bus drops us in the carpark and tells us to be ready at 2 sharp to go back to Cordoba. OK. We go into the museum building only to discover that we have to queue and buy a ticket to allow us into the museum and into the grounds up the hill. We are directed back to the car park to wait for the regular museum bus that ferries people up and down the hill. We are suprised to be accosted by the driver as we get on as we didn't realise that we have to pay separately for the ferry bus. All this has eaten into our time by about half an hour so it is a relief to get out at the top of the hill and actually enter the ruins area. Sadly the walk through the ruins is all downhill and the bus only goes from the top. I imagine that we are not the first tourists to immediately see a more efficient way to operate things and avoid all the waiting and the queues and the getting boiling hot on a 40deg day trudging back up the hill to get the bus. We don't tell anyone but each other though. As it turns out we made the right decision to do the ruins first and then back to the air conditioned museum complex. All that aside, the ruins are remarkable when you see what must be the underground extent of the city. Some of the walls and paths have been reconstructed using a mix of original and modern materials. Both Rob and I have mixed feelings about this as at times it is difficult to work out what is ancient and what is modern - and does it really matter? Is the point to display ruins or to give a more complete version of the ancient city? I suppose that it will depend on the final result, and how far they go with the excavation and the reconstruction. It is hard to imagine that the entire city will ever by revealed other than by the existing infra red and other high tech satellite pictures which show the full area and its layout. I don't have the same ambivalence to the "restoration" of ceramic bowls where fragments are combined with plain reconstruction pieces so that the fragments can be displayed "in situ". There are some ornately decorated column capitals which are also part original and part undecorated simulations. On our return to Cordoba we pass the Arabian baths which are now shut of course. Siesta is all that is left to us now. While Rob sleeps I get up, after a shorter sleep, and walk to the station to change our tickets for Sevilla to an earlier train tomorrow. I also want to book our train from Granada to Madrid. I strike a man at the ticket office who has no English, I tell him I have no Spanish and we agree that it is "no problema". This proves to be true. We have made a couple of changes to our tickets along the way and at each turn the various ticket offices I have dealt with have been "no problema". The staff have been helpful, with varying levels of English, and cancelling tickets and getting a refund certainly never a problem. That was a relief. I can manage tickets and transport all right, but cannot read any of the fine print on the reverse of the tickets. I was never sure if there would be a penalty for cancelling or a refusal. As I say - never a problem. We have at times been encouraged to look at cheap internal flights, but have not wanted to do so. Train suits us, gives us a rest and we see the countryside - we have perhaps seen enough of it now to feel that it is becoming a bit familiar but who cares? Not us. The change means that we will now travel at a cooler part of the day - leaving at 0925. That confirms it - no Arabian baths for us. Luckily we have seen some at least as part of the Alcazar. After our evening walk as we head back to the hostal we agree that what we would like more than just about anything else is a swim. Not likely in the hostals we are in however, nor have we seen any pools nearby.