[ Nov.2016 ] On the second day in Jerez de la Frontera in Andalusia in Spain, we had a full day of sightseeing.
But first, breakfast.
Because breakfast was not included in the hotel, we went to a cake shop which was a few doors away from the hotel in the same road.
I ate a Cinnamon biscuit which tasted good but a bit too powdery.
Tasting the local cakes is another enjoying part of travelling, isn’t it.
After that, we went to the Alcazar (palace), one of the main tourist attractions here.
There are many Alcazars in Andalusia.
They are palaces the Moorish kings built and after the Reconquista, the local nobles lived there.
The Alcazar in Jerez was not so gorgeous as the ones in Seville or Cordoba, but still it was worth visiting.
Historically, this palace was created by Tifa of Arcos, one of the small Muslim kingdoms in the 11th century and then developed by Almohad.
The Almohad Caliphate was an Islamic dynasty which was started in the south of Morocco by Berber people in the 12th century and apparently it ruled all the Islamic Iberia by the year 1172.
According to the placque at the site of the mosque in the Alcazar, this mosque was used privately and this is the only preserved mosque in the city, where there used to be 18 mosques.
After Alfonso X conquered the city in 1264, the mosque became Saint Maria Church, though we did not see any sign of a church there.
Usually the entrance fee for the Alcazar is €7, but on the day, because they were doing some work on the camera obscura, which is supposed to be one of the highlights in this site, it was free.
But I enjoyed it anyway, seeing the site of the mosque and the bath and also the view was nice and buildings were interesting.
It was warm sunny day and we said ” it would be nice to retire around here”.
