We changed direction and turned back to Portugal today via Cordoba and Elvas to reach Evora. Cordoba is famous for its Mezquita, reportedly the second most beautiful building after Alhambra. This is originally a mosque built by the Moors after their conquest of Spain but later turned into an impressive cathedral. The combination of two styles makes it unique. What impressed us most is its size and the use of white and grey slate to build all the arches. This cathedral holds the record of being the longest active continuous use of weekly worship in Spain since the 12th century.
For us, getting there is probably even more exciting than the destination itself as Google Map really doesn't care about street size. As we get closer, the streets get narrower as Cordoba is an ancient city with a maze of narrow lanes in its old town. There is barely enough room to walk, let alone drive! On top, we encountered several "Telus" type of employees pulling cables outside the buildings blocking the whole street and they did not have any intention to move! Only reluctantly they symbolically moved their ladders and bodies to the side and expected me to pass. In these narrow encounters, you just have to first fold the two side mirrors in and start driving with your eyes closed and pray very hard!!
What really amazed me is that we saw people driving minivans (European size ones) zooming by among these narrow mazes of streets! Talk about driving skills! I swear they probably have only few centimeters of space on both sides of their vehicles!
At the border town of Badajoz, we wanted to fill up before crossing back to Portugal as we noticed the gas price was significantly cheaper in Spain than Portugal. At the gas station, it's the same scene as our Blaine border with vehicles lining up to fill up. The difference is that it's not self-serve but there was only ONE attendant serving all 12 gas pumps! He had this system of almost dancing among the different pumps, first asking whether you want to top up full and yell for the folks inside to activate the pump, then quickly ran to the next pump to repeat the same. Chaotic!
Elvas is another UNESCO town in Portugal which boasts several sites worthy of its own visit. We went to the Forte da Graca which is absolutely stunning! It's built to defend against the Spanish invasion. It's so massive and sit on top of a hill with a commanding view of the nearby town and its Roman aqueduct. There was only a handful of tourists there so we had the whole place to ourselves to explore. They opened all the doors to let us explore all the nooks and corridors. The nearby aqueduct is huge and it's probably the tallest we've seen so far.
Evora is the town we stayed the night. On arrival, I noticed I booked a room with shared bath by error! On top, the B&B has misled people about its room sizes. We had barely enough room to stretch, let alone to open our luggage. Other than these two items, it's actually a decent place with high quality linens and extremely clean. It came with U-serve breakfast and a beautiful rooftop terrace overlooking the top attraction of Igreja de Sao Francisco. We decided to have our own ham & cheese with wine dinner there for the night!
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