8-18

Early on in the trip, Seth and took a calculated risk: in lieu of our planned stopover in Antigua, Guatemala we would visit Leon, Nicaragua instead. The reasons for this were many, not the least important being being the fact that I had already visited Antigua and, more importantly, quietly and irrationally hated my time there. Plus the scheduling to make it happen twice was going to be a nightmare of epic proportions. A visit to Leon, on the other dand, would afford us the opportunity to see Nicaragua´s two great colonial cities back-to-back and ¨judge¨ them accordingly.
Well, that which was planned has come to pass and the votes are in. The verdict? For me, Leon by a mile. Both are charming colonial cities, and although Leon is slightly older, Granada has aged better [no thanks to the American conquistador William Walker]. Still, for all its lustre, Granada feels all that much less ¨lived in¨ than Leon. Indeed, even in itsw slightly dilapidated form, Leon ended up being so much more than a colonial city. If Granada was prettier it was also shallower, and Leon´s warts bestowed an extra level of depth for all its homeliness.
Both had lovely churches, true, but the spaces between Leon´s were adorned with murals and museums, commemorating its turbulent past. For example, Leon had the museum of Revolutionary Hereos and Martyrs, while Granada had a museum of Precolombian atifacts, and I know I´m a terrible classicists to say this, but only the former left me thinking well into the night.