My wife and I visited Spain for the first time a year or so ago - and although we never got as far south as Córdoba, the trip was marvelously diverse. We spent half of our time in and around Madrid, and little further north, and half of our time in and around Barcelona and did a lot of driving - and I was just blown away, over and over again, by the intensity of the geography and climate in the country. It seems to change, wholesale, every 50 kilometers: now mountainous, now plains, now alpine, now arid, now lush. It was just astonishing to drive through - and then a joy to interact with the people we met and the history we sought out.

But what's crazy is we didn't even touch the Pyrenees or experience the lush beauty of Basque Country. It feels like a set of disparate geographic and climatic worlds stitched together by a celestial force. If I were a man inclined to believe in God, I would see Her in Spain.