Today though, knowing me, I couldn’t sit still for another day doing nothing. Instead Ryan and I explored Granada; since we have been here for almost a month and haven’t seen the sights. We started off with a bike ride down to the Lake (Lago de Nicaragua) only a few blocks from the house. It was really windy, the water is brown, and there is not much around there expect tourist restaurants and shops so I guess we haven’t missed much there. Next we road to the San Francisco Museum. Its is said to the best museum in Granada though compared to the museums at home it was minimal. It has a handful of primitive archeological art, some carved stone hedges, a depiction of ancient life with papier-mâché Indians playing tribal games; which were comical cause they looked like kids made them for a school art project not to be displayed in a museum, and lastly an actually very impressive scale model of the entire city of Granada. The scale model was by far my favorite exhibit. That and the view from the museum over the surrounding houses made it worth coming to the museum.

After the museum we continued on our sight seeing bike ride to take pictures around Granada. We started with several churches then to cemetery and ended at the bell tower just before sunset. There are quit a few churches (iglesias) in Granada the more popular being: Iglesia de Guadalupe, the Cathedral of Granada, Iglesia de La Merced and Iglesia de Xalteva. Here are pictures of each….

Iglesia de Xalteva

Granada Cathedral

Iglesia de La Merced and Bell tower

Iglesia de Guadalupe

The Cathedral of Granada located in the Central Park was originally built in 1583 but has been destroyed several time from civil wars and most recently rebuilt in 1915.

Another impressive architectural aspect of Granada is the cemetery located at the entrance into town. When we first arrived to Granada we were immediately impressed with the cemetery because of the large ornate tombs. Some of the tombs are built larger than people’s houses, especially the people of San Ignacio. The larger tombs whom belong to past Nicaraguan presidents, diplomats, military leaders and wealthy families are located at the front of the cemetery. Then progressively get smaller toward the back till they become only crosses in the ground.

Cross graves at the Granada cemetery

Many of the larger tombs are (how I would describe) constructed like Egyptian tombs except not in a pyramid shape.

Gaint cemetery tombs in Granada

Tomb plaques

is placed or carved into the concrete with the deceased name, dates of life and message. On top of the larger wealthier tombs are statues of angels, crosses, saints, etc. We spent an hour or more in the cemetery going up and down the aisle looking around.

Statue on top of a tomb in the cemetery

After the cemetery we road to the our last sight seeing stop for the day: the bell tower at Iglesia de Merced. From the top of the bell tower we had a fantastic view of all of Granada. It was like the mini scale in the museum turned into real life. In a 360 degree walk around the bell tower we could see the lake, the cathedral, the other churches, the cemetery, and all the Nicaraguenses homes in Granada. A beautiful view!!!

View from the bell tower

written by  ryan & debbrial on December 20, 2009 from Granada, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas
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These place are really worth travelling

written by  sunnybeads on December 23, 2009

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