A little piece of history: Granada was founded in 1524, and it was named by Hernández de Córdoba after the ancient Spanish city of Granada. Granada is the oldest colonial city in Nicaragua and the all-time-rival of Leon. It is located on the north west side of the Lago Cocibolca (Lake Nicaragua). Lake Nicaragua is the 10th largest fresh-water lake on earth, and is inhabited by Bull Sharks. Its colored colonial buildings, interesting history and relative safety make it an important tourism destination.
Before going to Granada, I was pretty excited to see the buildings and Lake Nicaragua. But what I didn't realize was just how fast I would fall in love with it. It was gorgeous! The picture above is the Cathedral near Parque Central.
We took the coolest little motorized taxi to our Hotel in Granada from our bus stop. (Check out my photos page to see what it looked like.) The hotels name was Hotel El Internacional. Such great staff! The guy who owns it has duel citizenship in the US and Nicaragua. So he spends 6 months in DC and 6 in Nicaragua. He was born in Nicaragua and when he was younger his family moved to the states. His English and Spanish were perfect so he really helped us out with things.
That night we went to a steakhouse in the heart of Granada called El Zaguan. The food was - so good! We splurged and got an appetizer to share between the three of us. The appetizer was fried plantians with beans, sour cream (Costa Rican style), tomatoes, and fried cheese! Yum. I got the Jalapeno Steak for dinner and to finish the meal we split a dessert. We got Tres Leches and it had a slight key lime taste - my momma would have LOVED it!
The next day we woke up and figured out that our original plan to take a private shuttle to San Juan del Sur was booked for the wrong day. So we talked to Aldo (the owner) about what happened and he said we would help us find a ride. He called a few taxi drivers and other private shuttle businesses. The best price we could find was $50 in a taxi - which was only $5 more than what we were going to pay for our shuttle. The taxi was going to pick us up around 3:30pm later that day for we had a few hours to kill around town.
After having a jammed packed day in Granada we headed back to the hotel to be picked up. When we got there the owner told us that the taxi driver was having car problems and he told us not to worry because he would take us. Such a nice guy! So he drove us to San Juan del Sur (about 1.5 hours away), for $60. We paid $10 more just because he was so nice to drive us.
We were given a list of things to do in Granada and I'm proud to say we accomplished them all!
The list included:
Shop for souvenirs
Take a boat ride
Horse carriage ride
Eat at the steakhouse
Walk around and look at the architecture
We are still pretty impressed with ourselves on completing the list in such a short amount of time. You can find pictures of our boat ride in the photos section.