Córdoba Warnings Or Dangers

This is really not a serious danger but I thought I would add it to my tips. When you are visiting the Torre De La Calahorra the steps are narrow, a little step and winding.

So just be careful, don't rush and enjoy the amazing views when you get to the top!

If you are too hot on the beach, don't plan a trip to Córdoba, because it will be hotter there! When I visited it was 26 C degrees in Estepona (sea-shore) and 36 C degrees in Córdoba, just 3.5 hours away, inland!
If you visit in the summer, make sure you drink a lot and wear a hat.
If you can, visit in the spring, it must be lovely then. If you can only go in the summer, do go, it is worth it!

Watch out for girls or even adult women with flowers. They will try to approach you if you look lost or you look like an easy tourist target. They will try to sell you these flowers by giving you a fake palm reading. If you see one of these girls just ingore them and walk on by.
I was unfortunately duped by one outside the Great Mosque. She just wouldn't let me go until I paid her 5 euros.

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Remember that Cordoba has been around since roman times. Its steets were not designed for cars and SUV's, rather for horses and carriages. On some streets you will only be able to fit 4 people across and its not uncommon to see people scurry when a car comes.

The historic section of town is best described as a labyrinthine. I found it easier to walk along the wide avenue (relatively speaking) along the river and cut up into the area by the mezquita rather than try to find my way through a maze of narrow streets and passageways. It is very easy to get lost here!

You will see the gypsies near most of the major tourist attractions in most of the major cities in Spain. An older lady will offer an herb , it is NOT FREE! Easier to say "no, gracias" and just get on with whatever you were doing.

Likewise, an incident i witnessed in Cordoba. A young man offers to play music for the unsuspecting tourists. he was well dressed. the tourists didnt say no, the young man sat down and played his accordion for a while and became rather upset when the tourists refused to pay him.

We were warned that Cordoba gets very hot in July. Yes, it is very hot, but we went anyway. We're glad we did. We had no choice, other than to miss it, and we didn't want to do that. Cordoba is worth seeing, even if temps get up to 104 degree F. By late afternoon, we just had to slow down our pace. Our trouble was, we had no place really to go. Thinking air conditioning, we looked for places that might have this, but didn't have a whole bunch of luck. We couldn't find the movie theatre that was mentioned in the guidebooks. El Corte Ingles was air conditioned, which was nice, but there is only so much time I can stand to spend in El Corte Ingles.

Paintings had to be kept in a climate controlled environment, so I suggested the Cordoba Museum of Fines Arts. No one wanted to do an activity that required standing on two feet. That meant the Jewish Synagogue, which we couldn't find earlier, but now knew where it was, was also out of the question.

Trying to get creative, I suggested one of those horse drawn carriages, but my son adamantly vetoed this as being too touristy. Never mind that he carries a camera around and is easy prey for the rosemary bearing gypsies. I tell you, it is very tough work being an activity coordinator.

For lack of any better ideas, we sat in the park on Doctor Fleming Street for 45 minutes until dinner and counted the number of empty taxis we saw drive by. (This was obsessive-compulsive behavior to assure ourselves - no just me, really - that we wouldn't have a problem getting to the train station on time after dinner.) Maybe we could have gotten off our behinds, but we were just too darn hot and tired to even move.

Avoid anyone bearing rosemary like the plague. We got taken to the cleaners by a rosemary bearing gypsy in Granada, and we were not about to let this happen a second time. We saw the gypsies hanging around outside La Mezquita, too, pestering unsuspecting tourists. Just give them a very wide berth, and don't turn your back on your teenagers.

These are oranges at La Mezquita in Cordoba, Spain. There are orange trees all over the place in Cordoba, and in many other Spanish cities for that matter. Alittle word of caution... don't eat them. They are very acidic, and will probably make you sick. At the very least, not until they are ripe!! Its tempting for a tourist on a small budget to grab a quick breakfeast, but from what the locals told me... its not worth it.