Horse’s Breakfast – Cordoba, Spain

…When I was a kid, my mother gave us ‘horse’s breakfast’ before school.
Horse’s breakfast? I ask, perplexed.
It is fresh bread soaked in red wine.
So you had bread soaked in wine, and then went to school?   How old were you..?

Alvaro, a Portuguese gent whose acquaintance was made in Chefchaouen, offers a couch in Portimao, Portugal.
It’s an indulgent break from the road.  The weather in Europe is getting cold, even on the southern-most edge of the continent.  We sit around for three days, eating, talking about food, watching movies and arguing about the existence of god.

(Above: equestrian flamenco.)

Alvaro says: Portugal is a traditional society, my friend.  When I was a kid, my mother gave us ‘horse’s breakfast’ before school.
Horse’s breakfast? I ask, perplexed.
It is fresh bread soaked in red wine.
So you had bread soaked in wine, and then went to school?   How old were you?
Oh, seven or eight.  It was a traditional breakfast in my village.   That’s the Portuguese diet.

Alvaro is a flawless host, but I have a flight booked in a couple of weeks, and I want to see some of Andalusia, especially the Alhambra.  Alvaro’s couch is so comfy, and the conversation is so good but…  It’s time to move in, or move on.

It takes a long time to escape the Portuguese vortex.   Hitchhiking in Spain seems painfully slow going until you try thumbing in Portugal.
I stick my thumb out… and nothing.   Hours pass.   Should I catch a bus?   I don’t like busses.  Busses are predictable.  Travelling on public transport is like shooting a movie in a studio.   It feels fake.

After nine hours, I finally get a lift.   Ninety minutes later I’m in Spain.

I check my emails in a cafe.  Alvaro suggests I visit his daughter in Cordoba, who apparently likes a good yarn.
Alvaro fears his daughter is becoming a stick in the mud because she has lived in the same country now for six months.  He hopes that a good session of travel tales will stir her up and get her back on the road.
Tell her all about your travels, Alvaro says.  She’s too young to be sitting around living a responsible life.
I message Tiffany and she offers me her couch for the weekend.

Tiffany is a chip off the Alvaro block.  We spend most of the weekend cooking, eating, and talking at great length about all kinds of esoteric subjects including quantum mechanics, fashionable ethics, chocolate and linguistics.  I  try to slip in references to globe trotting as often as possible to fulfill my obligation to Alvaro.

We manage to fit in a bit of sightseeing around Cordoba between mouthfuls of roast chicken and multi-sylabic words, which is excellent, because Cordoba, like Seville, is very photogenic.

The visual highlights of the weekend are the ‘Mezquita‘, (the converted mosque/cathedral) and an equestrian flamenco spectacle.

WTF is an equestrian flamenco spectacle? I hear you ask.

The performance is irresistibly perverse, and features beautiful women dancing flamenco with horses, as well as all kinds of perfectly choreographed trick riding.
It’s hard for me to imagine horses dancing flamenco until I have witnessed it.
Once seen, the erotically charged vision of a tall, lean woman, in a tightly fitted gown, writhing her hips in the face of a snorting, prancing stallion makes an indelible mark on my cerebral cortex.  My appreciation of kink has been taken to a whole new level.  Dressage has suddenly lost all it’s allure.  Jodhpurs and whips just don’t cut it anymore.

Tiffany and I develop such an appetite watching the horse show that I am compelled to buy 9 chocolate donuts from the “chino” (7/11), which we eat immediately, arguing about the evolutionary implications of what we just witnessed through mouthfuls of crumbs and frosting.  For supper, we have horse’s breakfast, minus the bread.

Tiffany’s couch is so comfy, and like her dad, she is a fabulous host, but… my days in Europe are numbered.  It’s time for me to head south to Granada.

Tiffany has decided to go to Oslo for the weekend.  Her dad will be pleased.

In case you think I am making it up about the horsey flamenco, here are the photos to prove it.  (There are no photos of the chocolate donuts.   There simply wasn’t time.)

(Part of the royal wagon museum.)

(Cordoba.)

(Roman temple ruins, under renovation.)

(The wall of the Mezquita.)

(This monument is dedicated to the Spanish general who kicked the Moors out of Cordoba.)

(Inside the Mezquita.)

(The catholic chapel the Spanish built in the heart of the former mosque.)

(Unfinished column in the Mezquita museum.)

(The Mezquita bell tower.)

 
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