Pretty much a normal Wednesday around the Miller household in Granada. Writing, posting and calls all day. There seem to be a lot of calls these days.
I have introduced Dominica to modern hidden object games. Somehow, after having played them years ago, she was very unaware of what they were like now with voice acting, detailed stories and such more like other kinds of adventure games. She has been getting more and more into the hidden object genre the more that she investigates it.
This evening Dominica sent me out to find the Tika Bus station in Granada so that we could figure out how and if we are going to go to Costa Rica to hang out with Paul and Karen this week. The week is going by quickly and we have not managed to figure anything out yet.
It was about an hour of me walking around and searching before I found the place. I went in and got the scoop from the guy working there. Going to be about $250 and we could leave at either 7am or 1pm.
I checked in at the bakery on the way home but they were out of what we wanted.
I got home and we discussed the bus and other travel options. We are considering taking a taxi to the border.
We went to do some quick research because Dominica wanted me to be versed as to all of the details necessary for crossing the border as Costa Rica does not make this particularly easy and then we saw the news….
Just our luck that on the very day that we want to go to Costa Rica from Nicaragua that there is a humanitarian crisis going on and thousands of Cuban refugees attempting to make their way from Ecuador and Panama, through Costa Rica and up through Nicaragua would be trapped at the border blocking the roads.
Apparently something like two thousands refugees had made it to Nicaragua and had been turned around and sent back over the border and are now causing issues in Costa Rica and the border is essentially closed. So if we make any plans or take the bus we might get stuck too. So we had to rule things out for tonight. We are going to reevaluate the situation in the morning. But we are not going to attempt the seven in the morning bus no matter what. So holding tight until then.
These are the kinds of travel surprises that you are a bit more likely to run into in Central America. We would never have guessed that something like this would affect us going to visit friends this week.
Everyone got showered and dressed and tonight we are going out for dinner at a nice hotel that I have been wanting the family to go to for a month – Hotel La Merced Real by the ancient church right down the street from our corner to the south. Dominica and the girls have actually never been there and don’t even know where it is! I had stopped by last night and checked the menu and felt confident that they would have food that we would like and that the girls would eat.
We got to the hotel restaurant around six, about forty five minutes earlier than the main dinner crowd in Granada, from what we can tell. We were the only table there, which was a little surprising. The view was nice, they open everything up and you are basically sitting outside looking at the old church across the street, La Merced.
This turned out to be one of our best meals yet in Nicaragua yet! The service was absolutely excellent, for starters, and the food was all amazing too. We ordered mozzarella sticks for the girls (they translate them as mozzarella fingers here) and he recommended chicken fingers as a meal instead and we asked about fish fingers and he said that they did not have them but ran into the kitchen and the chef said that he would make them for the girls special!
Liesl just LOVED the fish fingers! She devoured them and skipped eating everything else so that she could have room for them. Luciana loved the mozzarella sticks too. Both girls ate really well tonight. I had a good salmon fillet. Dominica was the big winner this evening, though. She had a tropical fish dinner that was completely amazing, some of the best fish ever. It was something like sole covered in plantains and fried with a tropical fruit sauce over it. Amazing. So delicious.
It was just an awesome meal. Everyone’s food was awesome and the service was great and the venue was great. No one came in to eat the entire time that we were there, it was our restaurant for the evening.
After dinner we came home, which was a short walk straight up the street, and then set up in the bedroom and played Octodad for quite a while. The girls love this game. It is incredibly challenging for them because of the controls which actually makes it really good for them.
After the girls were done and went to bed, Dominica and I played Episode Four of Law & Order Legacies.