Cordoba

The only good thing about a solo road trip is you can sing your lungs out without causing small droplets of blood to ooze from your passenger's ears...although I feel certain a few sheep's heads snapped around with wincing pained expressions as I passed. The downside of Spanish radio Is it has mostly Spanish songs and I heard everything from Spanish AC/DC to Spanish Bob Dylan, Spanish Creedence, Spanish Kylie (hard to tell the difference), even Spanish Grateful Dead ( Muerte Digna?).

The Mezquita - or Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, is a world heritage site. It was built circa 600 and until 710 was a Catholic Church. The moors (Muslims) conquered Spain in 710 so from 711 onwards it was divided into Muslim and Chrstian halves up to 784 when the Emir purchased the Christian half, demolished the church and built the grand mosque of Cordoba and up until 1236 it remained completely Muslim. Córdoba returned to Christian rule in 1236 after which the mosque was catholicised with a nave and has been solely Catholic ever since.

After leaving Cordoba, I drive past a tall tower with a bright section near the top. It seemed a little futuristic however and it wasn't until got to Seville I looked it up. It was one of Spain's latest solar power towers where solar panels are arranged in a circular formation around the tower angling the rays towards the collector point. 

Of course all I could see from the road was the tower.

Opened in 2011, it was the first large scale solar tower power plant to use molten salt to capture heat during the day so that the plant can still produce energy at night. So ironically, this solar power plant produces energy 24/7. As it was daylight, you can appreciate how bright this was.

Driving along I noticed a bull....a very large bull. I thought 'man if that thing wants to jump the fence, this car is toast'. Luckily it didn't move and was content to let me past.