Plan B -- A Pleasant Diversion From Our Impending Troubles

We weren’t deterred by the lack of electricity.  We walked over to the San Basilio neighborhood to buy tickets for one of the two patio tours in Cordoba.  I had planned to do this after we went to the tower/museum, so all we did is move it up on our timeline.

The woman manning the ticket sales said they are still open, and happily took our cash and sent us on our merry way (always carry cash – cash is king in emergencies) with our ticket/map of the houses on this route.

(There’s actually a second route of patios, but those tickets have to be bought online.  With no power, internet was down, so that made the decision of which route to take pretty easy – the one that was able to sell us tickets!)

The ticket is good for five patios.  It might not sound like much, but you have to understand, there is a major contest every May for the much picturesque patio, and the competition is fierce.

Patios abound throughout Andalusia, but nobody does it better than the Cordobans.  Cordobians?  Cordobites?  Cordobisians?  Beats me.  Anyhow, moving on.

The Romans used patios in the region for cooling off, and the Moors added lush, decorative flourishes.  There are few yards, so patios are the outdoor living space.

Roses, geraniums, jasmine, and many other kinds of flowers in baskets and planters cover the whitewashed walls of the patio, and decorative touches abound, such as old-fashioned wooden ladders and small fountains burbling water.

Honestly, Carol and I would watch an HGTV special on the patios (get with it HGTV!).  As soon as you see a fully-dressed up patio, you will want to have something similar in your own backyard.  

The pictures in the post below don’t do the patios justice, but they give some idea of the work the people put into their patios and the beauty that can be enjoyed.  

All five patios were spectacular in their own right.  At one point as we wandered around the neighborhood to the next patios, we heard loud cheering from a bar (doors are always open to the street).  We assumed that meant the electricity was back on.  Yea!