Once we finally made it to Granada, we fell in love with our AirBnb. Typical Nicaraguan style, the outside gives nothing away: just a wall with a single door.
Once we went in though, we were shocked by the layout. Also typical Nicaraguan, the house is built around a large outdoor courtyard, which in our home actually included a pool.
Granada was a sleepy little town that seemed to come alive at night.
Fireworks and music were easy to find.
The streets during the weekday were pretty slow with hardly anyone milling about. The occasional horse carriage would venture out of Central Parque to try to find tourists, but generally, the streets were quiet. There were loads of restaurants, a few museums, and many art shops all around us.
Many of our days were spent wondering around the colorful town. The kids took an art class with one of the local artists one day. They had an absolute blast painting. For the most part, the language barrier did not impact the kids.
The art-eeeeest in action.
Balance.
My favorite activity was at the ChocoMuseum. We took a class on how chocolate was made. We started at roasting the already fermented cacao bean.
Our endeavor was pretty labor intensive, and while the final product was nothing even remotely similar to the delicious Swiss chocolate that we love, it was still decent. Actually taking some cocoa beans all the way to wrapping a chocolate bar in foil was a pleasantly gratifying activity. It was all just a special bonus to try the various forms of chocolate as the Mayans perfected their recipes generations ago.
Final touches include marshmallows, obviously.
Keali finally talked us into taking a quick tour on one of the horse carriages. The longest part of the horse carriage ride was picking out a pair of horses that met Keali’s criteria. It should be noted that the criteria was really just a carriage being pulled healthy horses that were well cared for. So many of the horses seemed to be starving. We finally had our pair and we were off.
We made a stop at the grocery store so the kids could pick up some bananas to treat the horses to.
Days were pretty slow in Granada (which was fantastic). Scott taught us all some history of Nicaragua, and we were pretty happy to learn about it being the first country in the Americas with a female president, as well as it being the safest Central American country. In hindsight, it never felt dangerous. We all felt very safe the entire time we were there.
School is in session
There was a ton of our time spent in the pool.
The pool in our courtyard was pretty awesome.
And the remainder of the time was spent recovering from the trauma of being chased down in the bathroom by a Giant Cave Roach. Scott finally saved us, but it was too late to learn that the roach was actually a beneficial breed that somehow ended up in our home. As sad as I was to learn we shouldn’t have killed the roach, I don’t think I would have slept in the house a single night if we hadn’t found it and destroyed it.
Giant scary monster roach that can fly.
All in all, Granada was a fun and relaxing stop. It had enough expats there to find food that everyone would enjoy, but we still generally found ourselves to be speaking Spanish everywhere we went. I think we were all a little surprised by how hot it was. Coming from a perfect 72 degrees every day made the 90 degree weather seem suffocating during the middle of the day.
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