Our Family Travels: Granada, Nicaragua

We love Granada! It is an old Spanish Historical city. It reminded us a lot of Morocco, Africa. We stayed in the old tourist part of the city. Granada is right beside Lake Nicaragua. This area sits on a volcanic chain, it's home to to over 300 islands and islets.

A street view through a doorway. From the outside you would have never known that this was a hotel with a courtyard in the centre filled with trees and fountains.

A wonderful place for breakfast and coffee is The Garden Cafe. We had lunch in the café, it also has a large reading room with wall to wall books, a gift shop with local handmade items, and a gorgeous patio facing the garden.

In the central park we found this local artist and fell in love with a painting that he had painted. He is wrapping it up for us to take home.

The vibrant colours of Granada.

Spending three days in Granada offers plenty of time to explore this hidden gem of Central America. Although we mostly kept to the city center, there would be all sorts of things to do around the city and on Lake Nicaragua. This was a perfectly sized walking city

The crazy staircase up to the bell tower

The bell tower

The buildings all have open air courtyards in the centre. You can't tell from the street how amazing the building is inside. When we would walk by an open door, we would glance inside and sometimes it would be a restaurant, a store or a home. Each was unique and I would have loved to explore them all.

Central Park is Granada's city center and where the horse and carriages line up to take you for a tour around the city.

A typical street on a busy weekday morning

Granada is home to many vibrantly painted homes built in Spanish- colonial architecture. Many of the buildings are very similar and share the same walls. They have enormous doors and high-vaulted ceilings with open aired courtyards in the centre. Each building is special in its own way.

The Cathedral of Granada is probably the most iconic building and sits right next to Central Park and the main street.We climbed the bell tower and took some great pictures.

We climbed the spiral staircase up to the rooftop terrace. The first thing we noticed is all the huge mangos all over the terracotta tiles. The mangos had fallen from the massive tree that hung over the hotel.