The sixth day of our trip to Nicaragua was also Thanksgiving Day back in the United States. As I mentioned at the end of my previous blog I was glad to be out of the United States for Thanksgiving this year because just a couple of weeks after the election I was in no mood to celebrate an American specific holiday.

After another delicious breakfast buffet our tour guide, Moises, picked us up and we headed toward another colonial city. This one was in the opposite direction as the day before and it was named Granada.

Granada is a little closer to Managua than Leon is and since we weren’t making any stops on the way we got there pretty quickly.

Our first activity of the day was supposed to be a boat tour of Lake Nicaragua where we would see the series of 365 small islands that had been formed after a volcano eruption but fate had something different in store for us. A hurricane named Otto was headed for Costa Rica and possibly Nicaragua as well. Unfortunately, just minutes after reaching the lakefront we were informed that no boat tours would be going out that day because of safety concerns. This left my husband and I disappointed and Moises scrambling to fill the time that would have otherwise been taken up by the boat tour.

We headed back into the main part of Granada but we did stop to take a few pictures of the lake.  

Not getting to go out on the lake was definitely disappointing but at least I got to see the lake and take some pictures.

I actually think it was more disappointing to my husband since he had been looking forward to me seeing the little islands on the lake.

After a brief stop to take pictures on the lakefront we found ourselves in the city center of Granada.

We walked around a little bit and took some pictures and then checked out the Cathedral of Granada.

I liked it but since it was a newer church in the cathedral Leon it wasn’t as impressive.

Moises then took us over to a couple different art museums which had some very interesting paintings. We weren’t supposed to take pictures but since there wasn’t anybody around Moises said that we could go ahead and take some as long as we weren’t too obvious about it.

Two of my favorite paintings were of different countries invading Nicaragua, one painting was of the Spanish and one painting was of the American William Walker.

The city did seem a little dead because a lot of people have gone home and schools were cancelled because of fears that the hurricane could cause some serious damage.

After getting back in the van we briefly went by an old train station.

Nicaragua I used to have a very comprehensive rail system but the metal was sold by the government in the early 1990s to pay the bills and keep the country running. My husband remembers going on the train in the eighties before he came to the United States.

We then drove by several other churches throughout the city of Granada. One of the most interesting ones was one that still had the burn marks from when the American William Walker try to burn down the city when he invaded in the 1850s. 

In order to make up for not getting to go up on the lake we headed out of the city of Granada and checked out a small village and one of the churches there.

We next had lunch at a cute little restaurant overlooking the lagoon we had seen on our first full day in Nicaragua.

Our final stop of the day was to go down to the actual Laguna. It was actually very cool to get to go down and see the Lagoon. Although it looked very cold it wasn’t.

It would have been even prettier if they had been a sunny day but then again it had been a sunny day we would have never gone there since we would have gone out on our boat tour of Lake Nicaragua instead.

After our time down by the water of the Laguna we headed back to Managua. We dropped Moises all along the way since he actually lived much closer to the Lagoon then he did to Managua. The van driver took us back to our hotel and we said goodnight to him.

My husband’s family had plans of their own that evening so we were on our own for dinner. We decided to check out one of the restaurants named La Gran Managua that was walking distance from our hotel. We had seen it a couple days before when we had gone out for seafood and we’re looking forward to trying out their churrasco. Although the restaurant was nice the churrasco was dissapointing.

Both my husband and I had had much better churrasco earlier in our trip. Oh well.

When we got back to the hotel after dinner we were both a little amused because our hotel was having a Thanksgiving dinner for the all of the American tourists. Since we were no mood to celebrate Thanksgiving we certainly weren’t going to go for Thanksgiving dinner while we were visiting a foreign country. We relaxed in our room and got ready for bed. It was hard to believe but we only had one more full day left before heading back to United States.

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Justin Gomez and his sister, Terri, have never been close. Separated by nine years and distant in adulthood, Justin and Terri have little in common, except for the love of her three children. In the days before they embark on a road trip to visit the father that once abandoned them and their now deceased mother, both Terri and Justin are dealing with unexpected changes in their lives. Justin surprisingly realizes he might want more than a series of one night stands after a first date goes unexpectedly well. After a lifetime of being a strong type A personality, Terri is forced to confront the reality of the end of her marriage. As they hit the road, with Terri’s children in tow, they find themselves forced to rely on and confide in each other following a devastating event. Confronted with memories from the past and challenges from the present, Terri and Justin must dig deep and unearth the truth about themselves and their parents in order to build a new family based on their love for each other.