Country Info
- Havana
- Capital
- Cuban Peso (CUP)
- Currency
- 11,184,023
- Population
- CU
- Country Code
Cuba Slideshow
Travel Blogs from Cuba
Roses are red, violets are blue...
This is a top pick! ... I know exactly. it's something like this - a few years ago, mel's cute pharmacist's wife's cousin's mother's television repairman visited Cuba and met this random old Cuban poet dude in some random cuban town. They became mates and mel's cute pharmacist's ...
The third cuban instalment...
This is a top pick! ... impression on me. My parting message - Cuba is wicked. Go there... So - to the Top 5. Propaganda is everywhere in Cuba. As expected really. In the press; on the sides of buses; on the buildings scattered all over the cities. ...
Slipping into the tempo
This is a top pick! I start out Sunday in what I hope will be the routine of the day: up at 6:00, swing open the small door above our metal patio doors, and let the cool approaching day flow away the stale, air-conned atmosphere of our dim room. Itīs still dark out. The ...
Cuba in Mind
This is a top pick! ... , in spite of its problems, that what this country is doing is right. I'm sure we're on the right track.'" -- Cuba cooking personality Nitza Villapol, author of what has been reproduced in English (without permission or payment) as the best-selling The ...
Parental Leaving
This is a top pick! ... is willing to pay me to take Parental Leave, I ask "When are we leaving and where to?" Cuba seems a perfect destination for travel with kids: no rampant tropical diseases, a great health system, a reputation ...
Backwater
This is a top pick! Politely described as tranquil, and impolitely as boring, Remedios may be a bit quiet even for us. One of the two churches in town is closed for renovations. When we go to the music museum next door, it too is closed. Frequently, these places are shut ...
Feliz in Cuba
This is a top pick! Julie and I both celebrate birthdays while in Cuba. Mine is today, but "celebrate" is too strong a phrase for what I anticipate. Our three days so far in Trinidad have been pleasantly relaxed, with nothing more exciting on the schedule than occasional ...
Adrift
This is a top pick! ... our last night -- her previous guest has appendicitis and can't checkout. This means we have no place to stay our last night in Cuba, and no chance to hear for a last time the music that is Centro Habana after dark. Many calls later, we relocate to a ...
Recouping
This is a top pick! ... , cold remedies, allergy and asthma medications, etc. Thankfully, some is in powder form, or the weight would be brutal. Cuba has a famous medical system -- the largest number of doctors per capita, I believe -- and an equally famous lack of medical ...
Chickens
This is a top pick! "Deseo la muerte de todos los pollos en Vinales." My Spanish is good enough to convey my feelings to my hostess this morning, but bad enough to get it jumbled. I originally say "por" instead of "de" thus implying a wish for a death by chicken, not the ...
Complications
This is a top pick! ... subsides and sleeps, but it's an eon before we do. Julie is crying a lot, so concerned for "my little girl, my own." And me? Cuba was my idea. My campaign. I think maybe it's time to end this trip. I promise to call the airline in the morning and find ...
Lost photographs
This is a top pick! For every memorable photo that captures something of Cuba, there are so many missed. Sometimes we want a camera-free day -- to ensure we're seeing where we are with both eyes. Sometimes a camera just seems too personal. Or impersonal. Below are moments ...
Mas Tranquilo
This is a top pick! ... , the house is full of marble floors and al fresco wall paintings. Spaniards shipped all the marble over from Italy, not realizing Cuba has its own plentiful and varied supply. Julie aborts the attempt to climb the bell tower after the ascent to the ...
Farewell, Trinidad
This is a top pick! ... 's impression is that the austere conditions havenīt inhibited learning. Small classrooms, small library, small resources, but happy learners. Cuba has the best literacy rate in the Americas.You canīt walk many blocks without hearing a classroom or ...
Rebel with a Cause
This is a top pick! ... make it to Pan.com for lunch. Julie has been keen to sample the shakes and burgers here since reading the Lonely Planet description "Cuba's answer to Subway." I suspect one of the foods she's craving this far into the trip is a pizza sub. We're in the ...
Hemingway's Cuba
This is a top pick! ... Cuba. The resulting photograph is on the wall of Hemingway's old haunt, the Hotel Ambos Mundos in Habana Vieja. Whether Hemingway ditched Cuba for mental or political reasons, I don't know. His gift of the villa to "the Cuban people" saved Castro the ...
Remedios
This is a top pick! ... main transport options in Remedios (along with walking, of course). Up to four people at a time wheel past on old bikes. Cuba imported thousands of bikes from China last decade and is now producing its own lighter versions, but most of those passing are ...
Full Friday, afternoon
This is a top pick! ... , we cab to one of the many fine private restaurants that lure people into the further districts of Miramar and Playa. Cuba's paladares, as these restaurants are called, were illegal until the 1990s. As a result, they're often strategically invisible from ...
Havana time
This is a top pick! ... would have been insufferable; thanks for urging us to bring it, Mom) along the edge of the street, where most people walk. Cuba's spastic mix of '50s Chevy's, Ladas, bici-taxis, horse-drawn carts and bubble-taxis tend to give way to pedestrians. If ...
My best walk in Cuba
This is a top pick! ... of talking heads. There's something odd, yet appropriate about watching Al Gore's timely cautionary view on global warning from Cuba. You can see how obscene our consumerism looks to the developing world. Trina experienced a similar displacement watching ...
Vedado
This is a top pick! Never accept "no" in Cuba. At the bus station, we reject several cabs which have no seatbelts, despite assurances that all cabs here will not have them. Once it's clear we're resolved, suddenly everyone is helping to get one rigged up for us. Same on ...
Rain
This is a top pick! ... Jorge that it only rains at night, I was delighted to see a few big drops fall and prove my weather foreguessing works in Cuba as well. In the middle of breakfast today, it spatters again, then gets more steady. Food tables are moved under cover. Warm ...
Tour guides in Havana
This is a top pick! Our car habits are becoming more Cuban all the time; we stuff everyone into a small cab for a quick trip to the head of the Prado, taking about half the trip along the still barricaded Malecon. We arrived yesterday to a cold wind creating spectacular ...
Night in Havana
This is a top pick! I dream of Cuban winds. Warm gusts carry me of a sudden, lift me over failing balconies. At night outside our apartment, the traffic sweeps past the Hotel Nacional in a rush like wind. I cannot discern whether old cars or new nor'easterlies move ...
Full Friday, morning
This is a top pick! ... la Revolucion Cubana" overnight to see if the price ever dropped. Our walk south from the plaza follows the Lonely Planet Cuba walking tour for Habana Vieja. I've been really happy with this guidebook. The publication mere months ago means the info ...
Fish barms and Fish stings
This is a top pick! ... , I started with a fish barm cake, which to my mind is a delicacy only really served in the Northwest of England however in Cuba they do them for 5 ordinary peso or 10 pence, they are prepared on big trays and left on windowsills or handed to you from ...
Lets go Party in a Cuban Mansion
This is a top pick! ... to rain which prompted us to head back into town...... and ......... have a few drinks (we are now firmly calling it "when in Cuba") and a bit more sightseeing. We found a tourist bar with a quite a few locals in there and for about 80p for half a litre ...
Winding down
This is a top pick! The Malecon calls to me. I spend the early morning (pushing Lucy in the stroller) and late afternoon walking miles along the waterfront, drinking rum with university students who are diving off the rocks, chatting with patient fishermen who catch ...
Havana
This is a top pick! ... (small privately run restaurant). They are in peoples homes and are restricted in size to only a dozen seats. Finding these restaurants in Cuba can be difficult as they are not allowed to advertise. But, we found one in the Lonely Planet. Asked a guy on ...
For the record
This is a top pick! ... , but when I read in the guidebook that a couple of places might have old 33s, a bit of that obsession got brought down to Cuba with me. Visions of the carry-on that was filled with diapers on the flight down being stuffed with albums for the flight home ...