Day 39 18.08.15
Waking up in this wonderful city was great. Again my sleep wasn’t really the best, but I was excited to go out and about to see the town and enjoy the colonial style – yes, the sucker for colonial buildings writes again. I had a quick omelette at the hotel and then we headed out to explore the town.
We followed the map diligently, as we wanted to see a couple of things before we left at 13:30, and so we got to the first church. Along the way I took so many photos of the different coloured buildings, walls and doors (here’s just a small selection). It is just such a lovely and charming thing that keeps the city really diversified and happy and lively.
Nevertheless, we got to the first church thinking it was the church with a bell tower in front of the “lovers plaza”. Therefore a couple in our group posed kissing for photos, and then we were ready to go up to the bell tower of the church.
It turns out that we had missed the church we wanted to go to by about two blocks. We quickly headed towards that church, as if hoping that no one would have noticed us mistaking the churches, and got to the next church.
The next church was the one with the bell tower. Even though the inside of the church wasn’t as impressive as I had hoped, they did have some amazing blue stained glass windows, which I always admire. The amount of work and luck (not breaking the glass while getting it into shape) that goes into these pieces of art and the way the light shines through them and presents these strong colours is always just so amazing.
We climbed the little staircase up to the bell tower – definitely nothing for people with claustrophobia… At the top we had an amazing view of the whole of Granada. We had to be really careful as to not touch or ring the church bells in the tower as they and the strings holding them back were right in the middle of basically what is the walkway around the tower.
The tower has such an amazing panoramic view - I can just suggest it to anyone visiting Granada.
We climbed back down the little stair after having taken way to many photos, and headed off towards the central plaza. Along the way we stopped to look at a communal area where they make hammocks and other woven materials. It is a place where young people that are not that well off can come to fulfil social hours with which they then do courses that might help them in their future careers, such as learning how to be a chef, or a waitress, or learning skills like wielding or similar activities. The people working there were so well trained that they wouldn’t even look at the hammocks they were producing, but would only feel where their weaving holes were and were working like machines, weaving row after row.
We headed on the plaza to have some lemonades. Unfortunately for ALL the little cafes and restaurants around the plaza, none of them served lemonades, and when you are craving lemonades you gotta have lemonades and not make due with sprite. We therefore headed on to a place called the Garden shop (or something similar) and found what we were desperately looking for.
In a little central house with a lovely courtyard with a little garden, we sat drinking away on lemonades. They even had a hammock where I chose to rest a little enjoying the view on the little jungle garden in the centre of the restaurant.
After a bit of a rest we decided to go and visit the Cathedral of Francisco, apparently one of the older churches or cathedrals in Central America. We weren’t allowed access to the cathedral, whether it was the time of day or just us being tourists, I don’t know.
It wasn’t that spectacular up close anyway :).
We walked on to the chocolate museum, which we were told had a great swimming pool at the back. I was growing hungry and so instead I decided to sit down in the lovely courtyard of the old colonial house and eat some gazpacho.
It was too hot anyway to have some warm food. The gazpacho was really yummy! All the vegetables were freshly ground and blended and the taste was delicious too.
I headed back to the hotel to enjoy some last wifi and on the way hopped into a small convenience store. Here I was impressed by the Nicaraguan Pringles flavours. As you can see on the photo the flavours weren’t ones that you normally see when going shopping in the supermarket (Cheese, buffalo wings and tortilla with cheese flavour). I eventually got back to the hotel, packed my luggage up onto the van and off we went.
We took the van on a short ride to the ferry, from which we then headed off to Ometepe Island. The ferry ride was quite unspectacular, especially considering the ferry ride to Roatan. This ferry was slow and uneventful. From the ferry we eventually got an incredible view of the volcano, which increased our excitement to get off and explore.
When we arrived we hopped onto a van and headed off to Finca Venecia. A little hotel resort directly at the lake. (Literally it took me about 20 metres to reach the lake from my hotel room door.)
We managed to catch a quick glimpse of the sunset from the adjacent landing stage and enjoyed the sound of the waves crashing against the sand.
We got ready for dinner and I enjoyed a way to large bowl of chicken soup, which was wonderfully seasoned. We then moved from the dining table to the hammocks and just sat around watching Youtube videos and let the evening pass by. We also celebrated a fellow travellers birthday with a large Homer Simpson Piñata.
Then it was definitely time for bed.
