Spanish Town
on George Hamilton (Jamaica), 25/Jul/2010 01:04, 34 days ago
What a lovely day. It started out raining so we changed our plans then as soon as we did that the rain stopped. Of course! Originally we were going to drive up into the Blue Mountains but ended up in Spanish Town and Fort Clarence Beach instead but not before stopping by Terra Nova Hotel for what we were told was Kingston's best hamburger. I haven't had too many hamburgers in Kingston, but Terra Nova's is high up on my list of favourite hamburgers. The burger was delicious but we prefer a more relaxed venue. This was hotel posh with a Spanish flare. Beautiful grounds. The tree above is a fiscus growing in the Terra Nova gardens, otherwise known as Weeping Fig or Benjamin's Fig. We own one and so do Andrew and Vivien, but nowhere near as big as this fiscus!Which took us to Spanish Town, formerly called St. Jago-de-la-Vega 500 years ago, to visit the old town centre and especially the cathedral. I have been wanting to get back to visit the cathedral for three months and it was well worth the wait. Lovely! But we did see a coaster bus pulled over to the side of the road being searched by the military and we too were stopped by a combination of soldiers and police but after asking us if everything was alright they let us drive on. The obviously weren't looking for tourists with a map spread out across the passenger's knee! Above is the old bridge just on the outskirts of Spanish Town.This is the entrance to the oldest cathedral outside of the UK, above, and below is the inside and the grounds. It's a beautiful cathedral and in much better condition than we were expecting. We'd heard it was in sad repair but what we saw was a lovely, well used church with beautiful flowers being set up for Sunday services tomorrow.Behind the cathedral is a prison where we heard lots of loud men's voices. They sounded happy and we were happy they were behind the walls. There were quite a lot of them from the sounds of it. I also thought it was interesting they were hanging out their laundry to dry.We also wandered about the old historic town for a bit. Above are the remains of the buildings from the times when Spain occupied Jamaica 500 years ago. The brown building was at one time a school and is now used as the Town Hall.Then at the end of the afternoon we spent some time walking and enjoying Fort Clarence Beach. We took our bathing suits along but never did change into them. We were fine just wading in the waves and relaxing in the sea air.Great day! Let's see what tomorrow brings before we return our rental car at noon.