We arrived in Córdoba at around 5 in the morning and sat in the uncomfortable station chairs to wait for the locker service to be available. In the meantime, we slept as best as we could (not well). After a few hours, the rest of the stations seemed operational, but the lockers were still roped off, so I asked the security guard about it. He told me that we had to scan our luggage (as if going onto the train at gate 1 - no other gates required a scan) and then he'd open the lockers for us. The lockers were all numbered 2 or 5 (nice) and did not provide a key, but rather a 5-digit code to open them with. Room for confusion? Oh yes.
After locking up our larger bag, we made our way into the city center, along a boulevard of fountains that culminated in a metal (bronze?) statue labeled"Viento de cambio" (winds of change). The statue was a giant leading a small child, as a guide. Jay liked the statue a lot.
We were tempted into one of the many candy stores (Tutti Frutti, I believe) in our walk through town - It's surprisingly common to see these shops filled with bins of gummy candies and hard candies. Unfortunately, the ropes of color filled with white, though identical in appearance, tasted nothing like the delicious Fiesta candy I found in Austria. Live and learn, I suppose.
The city of Córdoba is split between the old city and the new city. The whole place was hot and dusty and seemed strongly influenced by muslim architecture. I took a nap in a plaza by a fountain while Jay read. Apparently someone mistook him for a local Spaniard and started asking him for directions, at which point I had to wake up and translate.
A random note: Most of the pigeons here were white. One of the larger parks we walked through (decorated with lush vegetation) was filled with white pigeons sleeping in the grass - cute.
After a delicious meal of Chinese food, we made our way back to the station for a night train to Valencia. Now, we have to question the competence of the security system when, if boarding a train from gate 1, you must scan your luggage, but all other gates have free access to the tracks. Once at the tracks, you can easily cross to any other track without returning to the gates where they scanned luggage. So basically, you would have to be very, very stupid to get caught with a weapon in Córdoba.
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