Cordoba day 1 (Wednesday, October 15th)

This morning we took a bus 8 Km out of town to the archaeological excavation at Madinat Al-Zahra, which is the ruins of a palace built in 940 AD by Abd al-Rahmann, the local Caliph. 80 years later it was destroyed in a civil war. Excavation began in 1911 and to date only 12% of the site has been excavated.

We watched an excellent short film that showed the overall design of the palace, and then went through the ruins. We actually ran out of time as we had a fixed time to catch the bus back to town. So we only had 10 minutes in the museum. 

After lunch and some downtime we went wandering through town (in drizzle) to see the sights. We saw the Roman Bridge (but none of the pillars are original), the Roman  Temple (a reconstruction), the outside of the Mesquita and Alcazar, the synagogue (1 of only 3 in Spain, and which cost 0.30 euros to see a small square room), and even a local cemetery (quite different from Canadian cemeteries). The cemetery was original so was most deserving of a photo. 

A bit of a slow news day today, so I will try and finish my obsession with knockers so that I can focus on something else. First off are the Royal knockers at the Royal Stables -

Next we have government knockers on a Junta de Andalusia building (2 so close together they could have got by with one, but being government ....) -

Then a small but functional pair - 

Then, my personal favourites, hands on knockers - 

Or, an even bigger hand on one large knocker - 

Unless I see something really unique I promise that I am done with knockers.