We arrived in Córdoba in time for
the annual Patio Festival fortnight (from the 5th to 18th May in 2014).
This is an amazing event when around seventy courtyards in and around
the old town open their doors to the public in the mornings and
evenings. Free route maps are handed out and just small donations are
requested by the owners. The sheer range of flower displays and the
amazing settings make it an unmissable event. We walked into the city
centre
in the evening to visit about twenty in the maze of narrow streets
around the mosque and Jewish quarter, and caught the bus from the campsite the next
morning to visit more patios in the old town near the Alcazar. We
discovered it was better to visit in
the evening when there were no coach parties around and the queues to
enter the patios were
shorter.
Here are just a few images of the spectacular colours on display.
After a
lazy afternoon recovering from walking around the city,
the next day we set off to the north of the city and climbed up narrow
roads to a large country park with extensive views across the plains
then drove a few kilometres east to the small town of
Villafranca de Córdoba where we came across another amazing event . . .
