Museum of the Convent y Inglesia de San Francisco

Oh hi! Wiji recently asked me how many more museums are we going to go in? I replied, just one more love! Little did we know that this museum would be such a tranquil haven and a perfect place to recover from the previous nights salsa carnage.

Here is the Convento y Inglesia de San Francisco. It is a beautiful pale blue colour, that seems to be faded out by the extremely bright sunshine. This is part of a group of buildings that were initially built in 1585, but burnt to the ground by the crazy rampaging William Walker, who incidentally torched the whole city in 1856 leaving only the infamous placard 'Here was Granada'.


Inside the museum is a beautiful central garden planted with these amazing palm trees. I just had to hug one! It was silent here apart from the calming sound of the palm leaves blowing above us. It was also extremely cool in the breeze. A perfect place to chill out, sadly there were no chairs to sit in this tranquil place...what a shame!


A beautifully vast model of Granada, being admired by Wiji. The buildings are colour coded to describe what age they are.


Outside in the back courtyard area, a view of the volcan Apoyo, which contains the Laguna de Apoyo, an enormous crater lake.


In the rear of the museum grounds we found what we had specifically come here to see: basalt sculptures made by the Chorotega people of Isla Zapateria, created between 800 and 1200 AD. They were best viewed from a distance so that you could see the forms. Most were male figures with an animal figure crouched on thier backs. We didn't go and visit these islands because the sculptures had all been moved here!


Figure with monkey on its back.


Three pieces of pre-columbian pottery that we enjoyed.






What the ....?!! These are actual papier mache figures, made in the most hilarious Blue Peter stylee. We laughed our heads of at this, once we had got over the initial shock and wonder. It was all too much for Wiji, who only just managed to contain a silent scream! Because we were lauging too much, and it seemed inappropriate, we had to move away from this area pretty quickly.


Very naughty of us, taking these next photos of some contempory Nica art. There were painted in the last decade and decribed as 'made in the Finca technique'. We marvelled at the detail for ages, before taking these non-flash sneeky pics. We would love to own one.