Saturday, April 16, 2011

16/4/11 La Ciudad Vieja

Early this morning I said goodbye to San Juan as Stella and I travelled to León, the oldest city in Nicaragua. We walked around the city all day and went to a few museums. Well I feel like I’m using the term “museum” pretty loosely here. They were more like small private courtyards that had art hung up around them at random locations. There were armed guards and confused looking people asking for donations. One was a contemporary art museum that apparently has the largest collection in Central America. I thought of how the curators in Europe and the States would cringe at the lack of climate control or security surrounding the many Picasso’s here.
We also went to a museum of myths and legends, which looked like a glorified haunted house. Since we aren’t exactly fluent in Spanish (a fact our guide chose to ignore) we only understood the gist of most of the legends. One that I feel I really misheard was a bogey-man type story designed to scare young children and teens, but the bogey-man in this case is a large chested woman who will catch you at night and suffocate you to death with her large breast. Interesting. There are some beautiful churches here though, and everything is being spruced up for Semana Santa, which is apparently like Spring Break here.
The staring and cat calls are really starting to get to us at this point, and I think Stella may actually try and fight someone soon. A month in Nica has really tested her patience. At least in San Juan the same people have seen us day in and day out for the last few weeks so they are kinda over it. We hit up a touristy spot at dinner for refuge.

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