This post is a bit out of order because I already posted the signs directing us into the the street with the “do not enter” sign from Saturday.  That was a classic spaining where the traffic department changed the traffic patterns but the community did not change their signage accordingly.  What should have been a 15 grocery run took over an hour.

Friday presented a great opportunity to get Spain’d but we escaped with only minor inconvenience.  This story actually begins on Thursday.

On Thursday, I started a conversation with the taxi driver about the upcoming fair thinking that it started on Saturday.  The taxi driver explained that the fair started at midnight Friday.  She asked if we were going to the fair and I said that we were leaving town at noon on Saturday. She responded by telling me that we had a few hours.  😂

On Friday, we went to an olive oil tasting where our host again told us we should go to the fair, but the four of us agreed the four Americans who don’t speak the language shouldn’t  wade into a sea of thousands of Spaniards at midnight.

About 8pm on Friday, we took a taxi to the north side of downtown for a walk and dinner.   We knew that the city was going to be packed down by the river where the fairgrounds are, but we thought this would be safe.  We walked through a couple of parks and then found a table outside at a restaurant called Ajo Blanco.

About 10pm we finished dinner and headed toward a taxi stand where we had caught a taxi on Wednesday.  As we rounded the corner, our hearts sank!  There were ZERO taxis and a HUGE line of people waiting. Jim quickly counted noses in the line and guesstimated that we would wait for an hour for a taxi.  It was a two-mile, uphill walk back to the hotel, so we decided to walk to the taxi stand where we had been dropped off two hours before.  There we also found zero taxis, but at least there was no line.  Within five minutes we were in a taxi headed back to the hotel.  Disaster (aka two-mile, uphill walk) averted! 😰 

I’ve included a couple of links to YouTube videos about the opening of La Feria de Córdoba.