Granada, Nicaragua. But could easily be the Andalucian one

Horse-drawn carriage tours of the town

Some photos from my wandering around Granada. Whilst Leon had some charming colonial flair, in Granada a very extensive area in the town has retained its Colonial style, making it a beautiful town with a very European feel. This afternoon I did a short boat tour around the mini-islands on the shore of the lake. There's some interesting wild-life, and a number of the islands are owner by wealthy Nicaraguans who have their holiday homes on them.

Central plaza - rebuilt in a colonial style

Park

The tour guide this afternoon also talked a bit about the history of Granada, and the long tussle with Leon over which city would be the capital of Nicaragua (in the end they settled for the city in between the two, Managua). The city was actually burned down by an American soldier who had been recruited to fight the Leon-Granada dispute in the late 19th century and mostly re-built in the original colonial style, albeit with some building following the then-fashionable neoclassical trends.

The Cathedral of Granada, finally rebuilt in 1915 in the neoclassical style

Main tourist street

Alleyway with volcano at the end of the street

Okay, so the horizon is not straight here, I know

Granada's location on the shore of the lake is what made the city so strategically important for the Spanish, and attracted so much interest from English pirates. The navigable San Juan river flows out of the lake and into the Caribbean, making the western side of Nicaragua accessible by boat arriving from the Atlantic.

One of the over-200 volcanic islands

Interestingly, the lake has a number of marine species that are not usually found outside of an ocean environment (bull sharks are one example). This suggests that the land that now traps the lake may have been formed as the result of a volcanic eruption.

Cool tree with lots of birds nests that are hanging from the branches