We arrived in Granada, excited for the sites and low prices. We picked a hotel from the Lonely Planet and had the taxi driver take us to it. We walked in to ask the price and were shocked to hear how out of our price range it was - over $20 per person. We started wandering around to look for a better deal.

We went one street over and found all the deals. It turned out that the hostel we were looking for was right around the corner. There were two places with similar names: one was a “hospedaje” and one was a “hotel.” While we obviously wanted to cheaper one, the taxi brought us to the upscale hotel option. We found a place, settled in, and turned on Forrest Gump.

That night we walked around Calle La Calzada that was lined with cute restaurants, bars, and people lounging around at outside tables watching people go by. We settled on a restaurant that had some Mexican food and sat down at an outside table. We had noticed some girls sitting behind us and thought that maybe one or both of them were “family,” as we like to say.

Not long after we sat down, one of the girls appeared, saying, “Excuse me, ladies, but can I ask where you are staying?”

They had just arrived that day and weren’t having good luck at their current hotel. We stuck up a conversation, and asked them to join us. Jessie, the woman who had first approached us was from North Carolina, and Nikki, her friend, was from Louisiana. Nikki’s Dad was from Nicaragua, so she was quite familiar with the country and culture, and gave us some pointers.

They also told us that the rum in Nicaragua, Flor de Canas, was pretty good. So we ordered a small bottle and two cokes and dug in. It was delicious. While we were chatting, a man came up and took a serious liking to Beth. He flirted with her by reciting lines from Scarface and the Godfather. I tried not to laugh, so as not to encourage him, but I couldn’t help it. He was actually pretty good.

Not long after, another guy who Nikki and Jessie had been speaking to earlier showed up. He was a painter selling some of his works along the street. He came up and began reciting poetry to us, very loudly, holding eye contact for uncomfortably long moments while he did so. We were being entertained left and right.

In the middle of all this excitement, there was a city-wide power outage, and we all sat in the dark while the generators were slowly started up by the businesses on the streets.

Finally, we decided to call it a night, but we agreed to meet the following evening for dinner as well.

The next day, we went to buy our bus tickets to Honduras and explore the city. We took a cab down to the waterfront on Lake Nicaragua, where we heard there were restaurants and bars. When we got there, everything was closed and very broken down looking. There was nothing to see, so we had the taxi driver take us back to the main square.

We explored the main square and the park for a while, taking in the colonial architecture and cobble stoned streets before heading to lunch at an air conditioned sports bar called Road House Grill. It was broiling in Granada, and we were thrilled to be cooled off while eating some good Mexican food, even if it was a bit Gringo of us.

That night we met up with Jessie and Nikki, along with Jenny, our friend we had met crossing the border, who we had emailed earlier in the day. We went to another restaurant on Calle La Calzada and ordered Flor de Cana again and some cokes.

We ate dinner together and told stories, and listened to a mariachi band before turning in for the night. Jessie and Nikki mentioned that they knew a really great waffle place, so we agreed to meet for breakfast. Jenny left with a guy she had been talking to, and her parting words were, “call the police if I don’t show up tomorrow.”

The next morning we all met on a street corner near where we had been the night before. We waited for a while, but Jenny never showed up. Beth and I remembered her parting words to us the night before and tried to figure out what we should do. We agreed that the police would just laugh at us if we went to them in alarm, so we decided we’d email Jenny who had probably just overslept and worry if she didn’t reply. (We did get an email from her later in the day, and that’s exactly what had happened.)

The waffle place was amazing. I had chocolate waffles and Beth tried the pecan ones. Neither of us were disappointed. We hadn’t had waffles in months, and were thrilled to be slurping up maple syrup again.

Afterwards, we all walked across the street to an old church to check it out. It was the oldest church in Granada. When we walked in, a guy who worked there offered to take us on a tour for free. We wandered around listening to interesting factoids about the church and Granada.

I was fascinated to learn that the large holes in the ground covered with fiberglass screens were actually tunnels that had been built during a war. The tunnels went all the way to the lake, miles away. Apparently, they were still in tact, but no one ever used them.

After the church, we said goodbye to our new friends, and began wandering around Granada to find fabric for my quilt project. We wandered all over town but couldn’t find anything. We headed over to the central market and checked out all the stalls but still no luck.

Finally, while searching for a Mexico Lonely Planet book, we found something that would work. Beth wasn’t feeling well so she went back to our hotel while I went to pick up a Nicaragua patch that I also needed for the project.

I was shocked to see that they were being sold for $5, about twice of what they’re worth. I tried to get them to go down a dollar or so, but the woman refused, saying “cinco, cinco, cinco” (5,5,5) in a tired sigh. I decided that I’d just spend the money, since I’d rather give it to a Nicaraguan merchant the money than some online corporation, so I forked over the doe.

“Oh, I don’t have change,” she said, sitting casually behind the desk.

I looked around. It was a nice store, off the main park. We were surrounded by really nice hotels and restaurants. It would be easy for her to get up and get change, but she just sat there. I dug in my pocket and pulled out the only change I had, $4 worth of Cordobas, the Nicaraguan currency.

“No,” she said. “I can’t.”

I walked out, thinking grumpily, “Fine then, I WILL give my money to some online corporation.”

I went back and met Beth, who was feeling somewhat recovered. Only thing was that the water wasn’t working, so I was instructed not to enter the bathroom.

We decided we needed another break from the heat so we went back to the Road House Grill again for more food and blogging. This time I had the potato skins, so I really “gringo’d” it up.

Beth and I had to get up extremely early, or really late depending on how you looked at it — 3am — to catch our bus. We turned in early and were watching Star Wars Episode III when the power went out once again. Worse than missing the end of the movie was that the fan had gone off.

Not long after the generator was started up in our hotel, and it sounded like a plane was taking off in the lobby. The fan was now on, but we could hardly hear each other talk.

“Do you smell that?” Beth asked.

“What?” I said.

“Do you smell that?!” Beth yelled back.

Smells of exhaust were wafting in through the open brick work near the ceiling of our room. Both of us started freaking out about the possibility of carbon monoxide poisoning. When we were in Ecuador we had met a girl who was in Bolivia when two tourists died from sleeping in a room with a gas leak, and this was in the forefront of our thoughts.

We didn’t know what to do. We contemplated just staying up or taking 20 minute turns sleeping. By this point it was midnight, so we only had two and a half hours to sleep anyway. Beth went outside to investigate.

She came in the room and asked me to go talk to the night watchman. Beth grabbed the Spanish dictionary and looked up the word for smell, and we struggled to explain that we were worried that it was dangerous. He assured us that it wasn’t, and that this happened all the time. They never had any problems. We went back into our room and noticed that the smell wasn’t bad anymore. We decided to go to sleep.

Obviously, we woke up and everything was ok. At 2:50, we headed out to the front room and the same night guard opened the door for us while we waited for our taxi to arrive.