Daisy took a photograph or two of that part of the malecon, known as Puerto Savador Allende, which we decided reminded us a little of Canvey Island.
Then we drove on, initially to Old Leon, which is some distance from the modern town of Leon. Old Leon is a UNESCO Heritage site, but frankly a rather sad specimin for one of those. The site has huge historical importance, as the early colonial twin cities of Granada and Leon were pre-eminent. But all that has been excavated so far is the shell of some 70 buildings. Even the grandest, the ruins of the old cathedral (photographed) needs a lot of imagination and artists impressions to give you an idea of what the renaissance-period city might have looked like. Add to that the intense heat and we politely chose to move on quite quickly.
So to Leon itself, which we shall tour tomorrow and explore ourselves the nextday. Guillermo helped us to orient the town by driving us around (it seems pretty small and walkable in the main) before dropping us at El Convento. We have indeed been allocated a beatiful garden-view room which turns out to be lovely and quiet.
We’re both quite tired at this juncture, so we merely sort ourselves out, arrange to have dinner at the hotel and go down for that dinner ridiculously early by our standards (just after 6:00) although our brains probably still think it is midnight.
It’s hard to describe the meal politely. Such a beautiful location, but the lighting is bright, the air-conditioning is set to “fridge” and the music is a sort of synthesiser-thumping-bollocks-remix of 1980’s western pop songs. The food is a selection of good ingredients thoroughly overcooked and unsubtly seasoned. We both had a starter of prawns in basil, which Daisy followed with pork medallions in gooseberry jelly and I followed with steak and porcini.
The wine was ludicrously cheap and pretty good – we had an apperitif glass of house white each and a bottle of Trio red, most of which we’ve saved for a rainy day. Except there almost certainly won’t be one of those,so we might just drink it during the remainder of our stay, when we’ll be dining in more traditional type places, I imagine. The whole meal came to less than $80 dollars including a hefty service charge for the comedy waiters who spoke no English and seemed entirely unaccustomed to serving wine. Janie said it reminded her of Fawlty Towers, except without the rude proprietor.
We went to bed about 8:45 so it is no surprise that we both woke up early too. We need to work on this jet lag thing.