I have never been to Jamaica, but sometimes you have to go to Nicaragua to experience Jamaica.
This tea, served cold or hot, is made from flower pedals of the hibiscus. It is a deep magenta color and tastes a bit like grapes or wine without the alcohol. It is also called sorrel, and is served often on holidays to guests in Africa as well as Jamaica.
Drinking flower pedals is an epicurean exercise that wealthy Roman Senators would have had down pat.
When a commoner can sit down and enjoy Jamaica Tea, at a Cafe in Granada, Nicaragua, you know the world has gotten a whole lot more even.
Panaderia’s are common in Central and South America and this is one that has American style doughnuts and fresh ground Nicaraguan coffee early before it gets hot. You can drink your cup inside at a small table or outside in a small courtyard and watch the street wake up.
This morning they are doing a brisk business making and selling cakes for birthdays and weddings.. At the counter, you can buy fresh bread, cookies, pastries, slices of carrot cake, and chocolate concoctions for your sweet tooth. They have ham and cheese and sub sandwiches for a modest price and I feel like I am back in Uruguay looking inside Eduardo’s back seat at his sub sandwiches in front of the Punta Del Este construction site.
Seating myself at a small table in a corner I watch eyes light up as kids see their birthday cakes for the first time and ex pats come in for their breakfast on the way to the market for fresh vegetables and fish and get news about the U.S.and Europe off their cell phones.
Once you find your best places in a new town, you start to feel more lat home.
Bakers in the back kitchen, knead dough, squeeze icing out of tubes to decorate elaborate wedding cakes, chatter about their boyfriends and girlfriends, Grandma, and Presidente Ortega.
This little bakery feels like being on an inner tube on a river that lets you lie back and let the river carry you along on a perfect summer day where all you need is a swim suit, or less.
Finding relaxed places in new places is what lots of us traveler’s like to do in foreign lands.
Being busy all the time isn’t much of a vacation, or a retirement..
When you ask locals where the best places to dine are, in Granada, El Garaje restaurant is one of the first to be mentioned.
The first time I walked past the place, it didn’t register as important.
It was closed then because of an electrical outage but the proprietor came to the door and apologized and shook my hand.
When I returned. he remembered my name.
The restaurant is called ” El Garaje ” because it occupies a spot that someone’s car used to occupy. Many homes in Granada have a garage directly in front of their house, You open the iron gates to your property, drive right into a garage, park, and then walk up garage steps and walk right into your living room. The owners of this restaurant have turned their garage, at the street front, into a restaurant.
This restaurant has limited seating, and, when full, stays full until someone leaves. Paul serves and his wife cooks.
The vegetable barley soup is so good that I go back to the menu for a pulled pork sandwich with caramelized onions and homemade coleslaw without mayo,
I leave without trying the sour orange cheesecake for my pocketbook’s sake.
There is fine dining in Granada.
You just have to find the right garage.
In Granada, streets have horses, wagons, carts and carriages..
Horses and carriages carry tourists on tours of the city and the usual place to match up is in front of the Hotel Alhambra at the Parque Central.
Horses and carts are also working today, hauling sand, lumber, and produce down shaded thoroughfares.
This morning, two Nicaraguan generations, sitting next to one another, turn a corner, the reins waiting to be passed, but not just yet.
There will not be many years before horses will not be allowed on thoroughfares here and one more trace of the nineteenth century will vanish.
This boy won’t have a horse and a cart in his future, but he will remember this early morning ride with his Dad.
There was a time in the 1960’s when urban renewal in the United States was all the craze.
Urban renewal caused structures that had been built hundreds of years ago to be razed, and, in their place, modern buildings went up with modern materials and modern ideas about what people were supposed to live in.
In Granada, in the Historical District, there are strict rules against changing old. Any modifications have to be approved, and the outsides of all buildings must remain intact and true to the century they were built. Many of these buildings have walls of adobe, one of man’s oldest construction materials.
Walking the Historical District, old homes, warehouses and businesses are being gutted, repaired, and brought into our century. Piles of sand and bags of cement are close at hand as day laborers mix and fill wheelbarrows with plaster for men with trowels and hawks. Adobe walls are repaired when they can be.
In this district of Granada, things seem to look as they always have, because the codes say that it will be so.
Old, with our help, doesn’t have to go gently into the good night.
Since Adam was created out of mud, and it was good enough for our Maker, why would we want to tear down mud buildings made out of the same stuff as we are?
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