City Life...Maybe Not For Me?
Right now, I am sitting in our beautiful Hotel Plaza Colon hotel in central Granada. This hotel is colonial architecture, as are many of the buildings in the city. They’ve restored it to its original look and design as much as possible and we love it. Our doors and windows to the outside balcony have doors in them! The ceiling is about 25 feet high. The rooms open to a walkway that surrounds an outdoor space. Currently, there’s a pool in that space but it’s the original courtyard.
I close my eyes and feel what it would be like to live in a house like this decades ago. I'm convinced my past life was set in the mid- to late-1800s and that I was of upper class. :)
I love Colonial architecture. In my dreams, this is what I want my beach house to look like!
Lovely hotel aside, Granada is a very beautiful city. Every building is a different bright colour. Reds. Pinks. Purples. Blues. Greens. If I painted our house in Calgary violet, we would be run out of the neighborhood! There was a fire in 1856 that basically burned the entire city. Set by an arrogant ass from Tennessee, said jerk came to Granada and declared himself president. He kicked a family out of the home he deemed most beautiful and, when people revolted, he set everything on fire except that house, which still stands. It’s over 350 years old and owned by snowbirds, apparently.
The oldest cemeteries are over 400 years old. They have crypts like in Paris or New Orleans but their sizes rival those two cities. The history here is interesting. Boundaries have changed. Presidents have been loved and hated. The Spanish settled here and pirates successfully attacked via the lake numerous times.
A volcano, Mombacho, erupted a few hundred years ago and created 365 small islands out in the lake. If we'd stayed longer in Granada, it would have been interesting to take the 2-3 hour tour of the islands, where you can see monkeys and indigenous people.
We are staying right across from Parque Centrale, where horse-drawn carriages line up waiting to drive tourists around. Bryan and I gave into one guy’s pleas to ride with him this afternoon. It was good - we learned a lot about Granada and saw areas we never would have walked to otherwise. The horses, though, are so skinny and they stand outside here all day. I’m not sure they get enough food but I did see one guy giving the horses some water. Poor things.
We're pretty sure that, in the middle of our carriage ride, our driver did a drug deal / trade...
Firecrackers go off all day long. Don’t they know you can’t see them when it’s daylight??? It’s startling to keep hearing them. People also drive pickup trucks around town with massive speakers in the bed, blaring Spanish nonsense all day and night. Since I have no idea what's being said, I keep thinking it's political propaganda but the carriage driver told us that most are advertising things like cyber cafes. Huh. Interesting and super annoying way of marketing your business!!
The vendors in and around the park are already driving me crazy. We never had anyone bothering us to buy their crap on the islands. (Except for the lady trying to sell us coconut oil that she had in a used coke bottle...) Here, it’s Every. Single. Moment. Sitting at a restaurant. Walking around. Buying from someone else. Bananas! I’ll take island life any day!
We also went to the Nicaraguan chocolate museum. We had a brief history on how chocolate was discovered and eventually turned into the milky, sugary, highly processed junk food we see today. But, here they try to keep things basic. Sugar is still used because even I cannot handle 100% cacao. But there are no preservatives or fillers in their chocolates.
I bought some 70% cacao chocolate today that tastes pure but looks rough. I can see why some people complained on Trip Advisor about this stuff but clearly they’re clueless as to why this chocolate doesn’t have the same look and feel as a Hershey’s bar. I like it. Bryan liked it.
We also did a short but very informative museum walk-through of an old convent. Sure, there were many religious paintings and relics that we quickly skipped through. But they had Colonial life artifacts and these awesome statues that were found on some of the volcanic islands that the indigenous people carved long before Columbus and the Spaniards discovered this land.
Back to island life for a minute....
Our walk halfway around the island on Thursday netted Bryan a very messed up knee. After a dip in the ocean and a shower, we hung out on the hotel patio and played a card game I remembered my Grandma playing with me, called “golf”. The food at Las Palmeras was great so we just ate there and had a few drinks - this was how we spent our 1-year anniversary. At about 10:00, the wind suddenly picked up and 5 minutes later the sky opened!
The panga driver and crew were having a few beers there as well and they all just jumped up and took off in the boats. All night long, wind howled, furniture banged against the hotel walls and the rain kept coming.
By morning, the rain had stopped but a couple of palm tree branches were down and some beach furniture was askew. No pangas in sight, though they were supposed to pick us up there at 6:00 am.
Instead of waiting, we walked to the pier and met two girls from Vancouver and two from Spain. The military showed up and told us that, due to the wind, our scheduled 6:30 panga wouldn’t leave until 9:00. A few people had 8:30 flights out of Big Corn; ours was at 12:45. So, we figured we could still catch our flight if we left at 9:00 instead of 6:30.
A dive boat capsized overnight and a large fishing boat had drifted in too far and broke off a rudder. Most of the other boats were full of water and required hours of bailing out. We heard a roof had blown off of a house. Of course, many homes on Little Corn were made of sheets of corrugated steel so...
Anyway, a few hours later, we finally were given the okay to leave on the panga at 10:00. Those of us on the 12:45 flight made it in lots of time to catch our plane. The earlier flight that missed had everyone waiting standby indefinitely. Crappy.
I felt so bad for all the random dogs and cats on the island - most of the dogs were out and about the morning after the storm so I guess everyone found shelter. We spoke with a guy from the UK who had been told the history of the dogs. Someone from the US came to the island to live and brought with him a couple of dogs. He then left but didn't take his dogs with him. The dogs moved to a new 'home', where they weren't really fed but were sheltered. Eventually they had puppies and the dogs just kind of move around to whomever will feed them.
We arrived back in Managua on time and found our driver, who drove like a maniac but got us to Granada in one piece. So, leg three of our journey was a success! Take it as it comes...sometimes there’s not a lot you can do.
I close my eyes and feel what it would be like to live in a house like this decades ago. I'm convinced my past life was set in the mid- to late-1800s and that I was of upper class. :)
I love Colonial architecture. In my dreams, this is what I want my beach house to look like!
Lovely hotel aside, Granada is a very beautiful city. Every building is a different bright colour. Reds. Pinks. Purples. Blues. Greens. If I painted our house in Calgary violet, we would be run out of the neighborhood! There was a fire in 1856 that basically burned the entire city. Set by an arrogant ass from Tennessee, said jerk came to Granada and declared himself president. He kicked a family out of the home he deemed most beautiful and, when people revolted, he set everything on fire except that house, which still stands. It’s over 350 years old and owned by snowbirds, apparently.
The oldest cemeteries are over 400 years old. They have crypts like in Paris or New Orleans but their sizes rival those two cities. The history here is interesting. Boundaries have changed. Presidents have been loved and hated. The Spanish settled here and pirates successfully attacked via the lake numerous times.
A volcano, Mombacho, erupted a few hundred years ago and created 365 small islands out in the lake. If we'd stayed longer in Granada, it would have been interesting to take the 2-3 hour tour of the islands, where you can see monkeys and indigenous people.
We are staying right across from Parque Centrale, where horse-drawn carriages line up waiting to drive tourists around. Bryan and I gave into one guy’s pleas to ride with him this afternoon. It was good - we learned a lot about Granada and saw areas we never would have walked to otherwise. The horses, though, are so skinny and they stand outside here all day. I’m not sure they get enough food but I did see one guy giving the horses some water. Poor things.
We're pretty sure that, in the middle of our carriage ride, our driver did a drug deal / trade...
Firecrackers go off all day long. Don’t they know you can’t see them when it’s daylight??? It’s startling to keep hearing them. People also drive pickup trucks around town with massive speakers in the bed, blaring Spanish nonsense all day and night. Since I have no idea what's being said, I keep thinking it's political propaganda but the carriage driver told us that most are advertising things like cyber cafes. Huh. Interesting and super annoying way of marketing your business!!
The vendors in and around the park are already driving me crazy. We never had anyone bothering us to buy their crap on the islands. (Except for the lady trying to sell us coconut oil that she had in a used coke bottle...) Here, it’s Every. Single. Moment. Sitting at a restaurant. Walking around. Buying from someone else. Bananas! I’ll take island life any day!
We also went to the Nicaraguan chocolate museum. We had a brief history on how chocolate was discovered and eventually turned into the milky, sugary, highly processed junk food we see today. But, here they try to keep things basic. Sugar is still used because even I cannot handle 100% cacao. But there are no preservatives or fillers in their chocolates.
I bought some 70% cacao chocolate today that tastes pure but looks rough. I can see why some people complained on Trip Advisor about this stuff but clearly they’re clueless as to why this chocolate doesn’t have the same look and feel as a Hershey’s bar. I like it. Bryan liked it.
We also did a short but very informative museum walk-through of an old convent. Sure, there were many religious paintings and relics that we quickly skipped through. But they had Colonial life artifacts and these awesome statues that were found on some of the volcanic islands that the indigenous people carved long before Columbus and the Spaniards discovered this land.
Back to island life for a minute....
Our walk halfway around the island on Thursday netted Bryan a very messed up knee. After a dip in the ocean and a shower, we hung out on the hotel patio and played a card game I remembered my Grandma playing with me, called “golf”. The food at Las Palmeras was great so we just ate there and had a few drinks - this was how we spent our 1-year anniversary. At about 10:00, the wind suddenly picked up and 5 minutes later the sky opened!
The panga driver and crew were having a few beers there as well and they all just jumped up and took off in the boats. All night long, wind howled, furniture banged against the hotel walls and the rain kept coming.
By morning, the rain had stopped but a couple of palm tree branches were down and some beach furniture was askew. No pangas in sight, though they were supposed to pick us up there at 6:00 am.
Instead of waiting, we walked to the pier and met two girls from Vancouver and two from Spain. The military showed up and told us that, due to the wind, our scheduled 6:30 panga wouldn’t leave until 9:00. A few people had 8:30 flights out of Big Corn; ours was at 12:45. So, we figured we could still catch our flight if we left at 9:00 instead of 6:30.
A dive boat capsized overnight and a large fishing boat had drifted in too far and broke off a rudder. Most of the other boats were full of water and required hours of bailing out. We heard a roof had blown off of a house. Of course, many homes on Little Corn were made of sheets of corrugated steel so...
Anyway, a few hours later, we finally were given the okay to leave on the panga at 10:00. Those of us on the 12:45 flight made it in lots of time to catch our plane. The earlier flight that missed had everyone waiting standby indefinitely. Crappy.
I felt so bad for all the random dogs and cats on the island - most of the dogs were out and about the morning after the storm so I guess everyone found shelter. We spoke with a guy from the UK who had been told the history of the dogs. Someone from the US came to the island to live and brought with him a couple of dogs. He then left but didn't take his dogs with him. The dogs moved to a new 'home', where they weren't really fed but were sheltered. Eventually they had puppies and the dogs just kind of move around to whomever will feed them.
We arrived back in Managua on time and found our driver, who drove like a maniac but got us to Granada in one piece. So, leg three of our journey was a success! Take it as it comes...sometimes there’s not a lot you can do.
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