Back to school.... in Puglia!

Having tried to relearn Spanish earlier this year in Lima and finding that most of my sentences were a mix of Spanish and Italian words, I decided I should go back to just trying to speak Italian!
Puglia is an area of Italy which, up to now. I had not visited and so I searched for a small school there.
Casa di Puglia in Ostuni appealed. No more than 4 persons per class, casual in a teacher's home and Ostuni itself looked very charming and interesting to visit. It was also fairly well positioned to visit other well known towns.

The school recommended that I stay in a small local hotel in the old historic town and this was excellent advice. The Hotel  La Terra had been a bishop's palace in the 13th century.....so was quite quirky but very appealing.

I had a view over Ostuni....

Getting to the school each morning was a 10 minute walk...... good exercise! Ostuni is hilly!

The street was a dead end with steps.....

but a few cars did seem to make it to the very end........

 is also difficult to drive around within the city... lots of one way streets and the helpful advice on the car's GPS was obey traffic rules....but it did not have the one way streets uploaded!  After one hour trying to get to the hotel I had to call the hotel to come and rescue me.

Ostuni is an absolutely charming small historic town.......

Leon, Nicaragua......also an old colonial city.

 Both Granada and Leon were settled by the Spanish in the early 15 th C . So I felt I had to continue on to Leon.... it takes about 2.5 hours by road. The hotel arranged for me to go by shuttle.

Again I chose to stay in an old building in the historic centre, the El Convento hotel...... it had actually been a convent attached to the San Franciso church!

It was delightful......but the rooms were not now as small as the prior cells!

The main attraction in Leon is the Unesco Cathedral.....

The area around the cathedral in downtown Leon was interesting. Lots of evidence of the Sandinista era....

The Centro de Art in Leon is amazing! It is housed in 6 old colonial homes which are also amazing!

 

It had possibly more Sam Francis than the SF Moma!

...and a room with 17 Picasso lithographs........ they had quite a few from the 29 lithographs from his Portrait Imaginaire period ............

..and a few Henry Moore's.....

they did also have quite a few religious works!

It was amazing and totally unexpected!

On to Nicaragua

 Being so close to Nicaragua I decided I really wanted to visit this country.

 So I arranged a taxi from Monteverde to the Nicaraguan border at Penas Blancas, with an arranged taxi pick up on the other side of the border to go to Granada.

Crossing the border was interesting! Lots of trucks circling around waiting to cross and quite a walk from one country to the other for pedestrians!

Again my choice of  hotel was in the historic centre, the Plaza Colon .... it was an old colonial mansion.

I had a great room with a patio....... and the breakfast area overlooked the pool.

,

Granada is a charming colonial city to explore......

the Museo de Convento de San Francisco....

This was very interesting inside... there was an area where they showed statues found at the Zapatera island archeological site... an island very close to Granada.........

Lots of churches.....

..... we checked out the Islets.of Granada.....

The Fort island......

Monkey island.....

The colonial buildings are great.........

..and lunch/dinner at the Garden Cafe was charming and a great place to relax!