Planes, trains, and pain-in-the-butt directions.

Landing is my favorite part of flying-- I like watching the odd patches of color transform into fields, lawns, and towns. I only wish it had been light out when I arrived in Madrid.

Or maybe I don't. What I saw was beautiful-- a vast darkness, interrupted by sparse patches of light. But I was wondering what Spain would be like, and I didn't find much in the way of answers from the view.

On the train to Córdoba, I received a different perspective on Spain. We drove through long stretches of countryside, often completely flat. That threw me off a little, what with being from New England, Land of the Mountains. The fields were all yellow, no green in sight.

But once we got a little south, the landscape began to change. Soon there were hills, and, if not lush green pastures, then at least a number of pretty green bushes being harvested for something or other.

When I reached the station at Córdoba Central, it was 34 degrees Celsius (93.2 degrees F). My landlord, who had kindly offered to meet me at the station, helped me get my bags into his car and took me to my new home.

On the way over, he offered me trivia about Spain in general and Córdoba in particular. He explained that in spite of being a Romance Language, Spanish draws many words from Arabic due to its role in the Moorish Empire. He also informed me that the Córdoba accent would probably be easier for me to understand than northern Spanish accents because many of the boats that left for the Americas departed from Andalucia, so American Spanish draws more from Southern dialects.

My apartment is smack in between the Historic district and the Modern district. As he turned onto a street that was so narrow it required us to pull in the car mirrors, my landlord laughingly explained that while the Moors were good architects, they had not anticipated the invention of the automobile.

Many of the streets here are like that. It's a bad city for cars, but rather than create pedestrian-only walkways, the city allows cars to pass on streets too narrow to accommodate both a car and a pedestrian. Since there's no parking, often people will just park in the middle of the street for 10 or 15 minutes. A line of honking cars forms until the car owner unabashedly returns.

This was what my landlord did when showing me my apartment, which is on a street too narrow for Google Maps Street View. It's a cute place with all the necessities: a bed, a desk, a basic kitchen, and, of course, internet. It's got two French windows. One is the door, and the other leads to an extremely small balcony, only large enough to stand on. There's a lot of natural lighting, which I will be taking advantage of to save on the electric bill. :-)

After unpacking the year's worth of supplies that I'd managed to cram into one carry-on and one checked bag, I decided it might be time to get some food to sustain me for the next few days. Luckily, I'd already Googled and written out directions to a nearby grocery store that would also be able to cover my school supplies and minor furnishing needs. Unluckily, navigating Córdoba is a lot more difficult than Google Maps would have you believe. Three times I ventured into the unknown in my quest for El Corte Ingles, and I have yet to encounter the store.

To blame for this trouble is the nasty little beast known as the Plaza. My Google Maps directions read, "Take a right on Plaza de Regina. Take a left onto Calle de Regina." So when I came across a square with a bunch of "Plaza Regina" and "Cafe Regina" signs everywhere, I took a left onto the street labeled "Calle Regina."

It turns out that Calle Regina actually went part of the way across the square before making a right angle and continuing in a different direction. To top it off, the plaza itself didn't cover the entire square but was in fact limited to one key intersection.

Although I figured out what I'd done wrong, I gave up at the second plaza I encountered. I'd already seen a few food suppliers along the way, and while they didn't have all the items I required, they'd do.*

Córdoba is the kind of city where, while searching for a grocery store, one can stumble across some ancient Roman ruins just chillin' in the middle of the city. With the sun beating down on me I didn't stay long, but I'll definitely be going back.

Thus concludes my first day in Córdoba.


*For 24 euros (about 33 USD), I managed to buy 4 potatoes, 2 bananas, a large jug of lemonade, a large mango/papaya smoothie, two soda cans, vermicelli (rice noodles), cheese, soap, a 12-pack of toilet paper, a dozen eggs, milk, sugar, 2 kilos of apples, 250 ml extra-virgin olive oil, and 4 yogurts. I know you're not here to read my shopping list, but I was pretty happy with how cheap it all was.