Not only Spanish

can be heard and seen in Andalusia. Sometimes, when going about your touristy business, you may encounter any one of the following situations, with varying probabilities, though:

• you turn around to take a better look at a kid hopping along the white tile path hemming a street, telling his mom to do the same in a language you register as your native
• you have to dig up as much Spanish as you can to explain to a stranger that no, you are not a friend of a girl from Vilnius; however, you come from a place quite close to that
• you feel a little ashamed having forgotten most of the Russian you used to know when an ATM selects a transactional language for you (I suppose on its estimate of your preferences based on the location of the issuer of the card)
• you shake your head "no" to two ladies having approached you with a question and a booklet with recognizable style of illustrations on its cover and they come back ten steps later to offer you the Watchtower in Russian instead
• you go to a grocery store for your weekly supplies and pick up a laundry bag (name spelled out in English) only to discover the rest of the information on the package is written in the three Baltic languages and not in Spanish and Portuguese as you've gotten used to seeing on labels here.

Córdoba

A Narrow Street

is most famous for its Mosque, La Mesquita (otherwise known as the Cathedral of St Mary of the Assumption). That is what we went to see. Less than two hours north from Malaga on a nice highway, it's easy to get to. Also, if you arrive in town after 2 pm on Saturday and wear your lucky shirt parking on the streets is free. Or, if you get to town around 8.30 am, the entrance to several of the town's museums is free for the first hour (according to the town's official tourism site).

We chose the first option mentioned here. Walked around the wide palm lined boulevards and narrow white housed streets, making our way to Mesquita. It turned out to be a very long yellowish building. On aerial photos you could see it as a rectangle, stretching several blocks where about 1/3 of the rectangle is taken up by the evergreen courtyard. Those are orange trees planted in rows.

Inside the mosque-cathedral are rows and rows of columns of granite, marble, jasper, and onyx. It all started with those columns, salvaged or taken from old Roman temples when the construction started on the 8 ^th century. Throughout the centuries, Mesquita grew, with each new ruler adding on to the older part, not to be outdone by the size of the expansion, and sometimes demolishing parts of the old (as when they built the cathedral in the 16^th century).

Striped Arches of Mesquita

By now there are what must be 30-some chapels, each one of them elaborate and lavish, lining the four walls of the monster structure. There's the mihrab (the niche indicating the direction of the Mecca) tucked away somewhere among the chapels, and an exquisite choir and chancel in the very middle of the building.

Main Chapel of Cathedral

The cathedral has a marble altarpiece, and mahogany pulpits and choir stalls; it is supposed to include Gothic, Baroque, and Renaissance elements.

What is interesting is that before the work started on the first mosque, the site had a basilica on it and it was used by both Christians and Muslims. Then, for centuries, it was used for Islamic worship, then, from 1236, for Christian. At the beginning of this century the local Muslims asked to hold their own services in the Mesquita but they have been turned down.

Puerto Rico vs Spain

It's not a baseball game. It's a dilemma we had. About where to escape this winter. And unlike the game we watched at Hiram Bithorn a year ago where Mr Beltran & Mates scored 3 over 0 against the Figueroa Brothers & Co our quandary came down to more like 2 to 1 the other way. Andalucia's proximity and sights won over San Juan's temperature. Sun they have both.

Botanic Gardens

it seems is something that generally needs hiding and seeking. Take Tallinn's garden - it's somewhere in the woods about 10 km outside the city center, and I think easy to miss if you ride on an older bus that doesn't display the names of the stops. San Juan's Jardín Botánico is actually in the middle of the town and you can ride the train to Cupey station, no problem. But when above ground, the neighborhood might scare you off even at the very beginning of the 2 km walk.

Founders' Mansion (Winter)

Malaga's Jardín Botánico-Histórico is actually outside the city. You take a bus to the northern end of town and walk back and forth, under and over highways on deserted roads for a kilometer if, again, those roads seeming to go nowhere don't frighten you to turn back.

According to La Concepción website the gardens were started by a wealthy family almost 260 years ago. The City bought the gardens in 1990 and opened it to the public four years later. The gardens are said to have more than two thousand species of plants growing. It seems that most of them have been planted to the center of the gardens as a cute little subtropical forest. It has numerous winding pathways, some runnels, and cascades. This forest part is very compact.

View from Jardín Botánico

For walkers, and especially those that would like to walk the Andalusian hills without the fear of getting lost or being attacked by local goats, I would recommend the 3/4-mile Forest Trail. It is labeled as moderately difficult and runs along the perimeter of the Gardens on a higher altitude, allowing good views of both the garden grounds and the city.

Next time, I would pack a food basket with lunch to nibble at any of the nice picnic tables and find out when the wisterias are in full bloom to sit in the shade next to the mansion. I wouldn't also mind scheduling my visit to coincide with the Malaga Tour minibus timetable to skip the aforementioned walk.