Córdoba with Unexpected Pivot

Gigantic rubber tree in Málaga

Our plan yesterday seemed easy enough: Get up, have a leisurely breakfast and then catch a train for the one-hour trip to Córdoba. We were flexible on the time, so I wasn't worried about not finding a train. We could go whenever.

Only...when I tried to book a train online, none were available, of any variety. I looked in the news and on the Renfe website for some announcement of outages and there was nothing, and Google couldn't find any reason why there wouldn't be trains, so I figured it had to be some kind of booking glitch and I walked to the train station.

"No trains to Córdoba," the woman at the ticket desk helpfully informed me. She said the track had been "broken" by the recent accident -- even though it happened north of Córdoba -- and the whole line was down. I'm not sure when this closure happened, because I had researched whether trains were running before we left London and they were.

Looking for Plan B, I popped next door to the bus station, which as you can imagine was somewhat chaotic. I stood behind a young man in a gray sweatsuit who had obviously recently been in a fistfight and had a crusty, bloodied nose. He was still in a bad mood. I managed to buy a bus ticket for a 7:30 p.m. departure -- the earliest available -- but we wouldn't get to Córdoba until 11 p.m.

I felt better having the tickets, but I didn't want to show up in Córdoba at that hour, so as I walked back from the bus station, I tasked Dave -- back at the hotel -- with finding out if flying was an option. It was not.

Fountain in Málaga

He did learn, however, that we could book a private car with a driver. We agreed it was worth the money, and soon enough, "Richard" was assigned to pick us up at 2:30 p.m. Whew! Much better.

We put up our feet at a cafe on a main square in Málaga and watched people for a couple of hours, and I wandered around and took photos. I saw (and heard) some exceptionally noisy monk parakeets in the Plaza de la Merced, with its central monument to General Torrijos:

Finally, at the appointed time "Richard" did indeed show up in a luxurious black Mercedes. It made me feel like an ambassador. We meandered through town and onto the freeway, which snaked through scrubby hills that reminded me of L.A. (Especially when traffic came to a brief standstill for some road work!)

We pulled into Córdoba about an hour and a half later. I was so happy to just get here.

This is our hotel, Las Casas de la Judería de Córdoba, a collection of former houses gathered around a series of inner courtyards.

The hotel had a welcome slideshow playing on the TV, telling us about the local amenities. This was one of the photos, and it cracks me up. Doesn't the woman on the right look like she's thinking, "God, I wish I could get away from these two." Clearly they've been traveling too long together.

We explored Córdoba a bit, including the area around the Roman bridge and the Mezquita, which we are scheduled to tour today. That's the 18th-century Triunfo de San Rafael de la Puerta del Puente, above, a triumphal column with Raphael, the guardian angel of Córdoba, on top.

We had a glass of wine and some tapas at the foot of the Roman bridge. I wrapped our tiny, crusty breadsticks in slices of ham, creating a "blanket in a pig."

Finally, in the evening, Dave and I walked into what looked like a slightly newer part of town and met up with blogger Mitchell and his spouse San Geraldo, Córdoba dwellers who are Internet celebrities in their own right! Unfortunately, as I belatedly realized, I scheduled our dinner with Mitchell at exactly the same time that I had to be on a conference call with my family to discuss my late stepmother's estate. HOW MANY MORE CURVE BALLS was this day going to throw at me?!

I wound up making the call from a sidewalk outside the restaurant, which worked out fine -- I got to hear the important points while Dave entertained Mitchell and SG. I finally joined them after half an hour and got a much-needed glass of vino tinto before dinner. They were very gracious about my double-booking.

Here's what I ate -- "broken" eggs and ham over chips with "baby eels" on top. The eels are not really eels, Mitchell and SG assured me, but gulas, made from fish that has been extruded to look eel-like. (I didn't want to eat actual eels because they are struggling as a species from overconsumption.) I thought they were pretty good but a vegetable wouldn't have killed me.

And of course Mitchell and I both forgot to take a selfie, which astonishes me and will require hopefully a second meeting, if I can tear him and SG away from their devoted cats.