Havana, Cuba Travel Blogs

Slipping into the tempo
Jan 21, 2007 (7 photos)

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. It´s still dark out. The sun ...

Parental Leaving
Jan 17, 2007 (7 photos)

... 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 ...

Adrift
Feb 28, 2007 (4 photos)

... a young driver who blasts Ebe Manuel out the jacked sound system as we jockey through the dirty, sun-blackened streets of central Havana. Conversation is easy. He honks at a pretty girl -- honks a bunch, actually -- and she gives him a delightfully saucy " ...

Recouping
Jan 18, 2007 (3 photos)

... (B&B, literally 'private house') has been a great kindness, affording fresh air (as fresh as it gets in Havana), natural light and a vast swath of concrete for chalk drawings. The chalk and antibiotics are both things we brought down with us. The ...

Complications
Jan 19, 2007

... 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
Feb 12, 2007

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 we' ...

Rebel with a Cause
Feb 25, 2007 (14 photos)

... 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
Feb 26, 2007 (13 photos)

... -- they don't mention this more recent history on any of the bilingual signage. From the walls of the fortress, old Havana glistens across the narrow channel that links the harbour with the Straits of Florida. Beyond it, the more derelict parts of the ...

Full Friday, afternoon
Feb 23, 2007 (12 photos)

... call out familiarly) and make tracks to the Gran Teatro de la Habana. In a city of landmarks, the grand theatre of Havana stands out, though it's better to gawk at its exterior statues and baroque detailing from across the street. Up close, the ...

Havana time
Jan 23, 2007 (5 photos)

... than a relaxed 20 km/hr, they tend to honk warnings as they approach pedestrian-clogged intersections. Public transport in Havana, besides the above, includes mammoth 300-passenger, double-humped buses pulled by trucks (camellos). Then there are the ...

Vedado
Feb 4, 2007 (4 photos)

... my parents (the only option available), only to discover they don't allow children there. We leave for Vinales tomorrow, returning to Havana next Saturday, hopefully en route to Varadero. The woman promises to somehow get us a room, at the best price she ...

Tour guides in Havana
Feb 19, 2007 (10 photos)

... of a contrast with its buffed, stained-glassed neighbours. I discover later that we've almost replicated the walking tour of old Havana in the guidebook, but with our necks craned up at the facades and capitals we've managed to miss all the interesting ...

Night in Havana
Feb 23, 2007

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 beyond ...

Full Friday, morning
Feb 23, 2007 (17 photos)

... Camera Oscura. As lovely as this part of town is, it's a little thin on eateries. We elect to head back to central Havana for lunch. Our ride in a minibus takes us around the waterfront of Habana Vieja, in front of the central train station and up Avenida ...

Winding down
Feb 27, 2007 (8 photos)

... drinking rum with university students who are diving off the rocks, chatting with patient fishermen who catch nothing. The ocean at Havana is a fickle and transient thing, conspiring with the sky above to create any number of vistas over the course of a ...

For the record
Feb 24, 2007 (3 photos)

... store just seems to be cheating in some way. I get his card and confirm his hours before setting off through central Havana towards the hotel. The streets here are a bit rougher than even Consulado, our first address in Havana, and there is zero ...

Departure
Mar 1, 2007 (2 photos)

I can't imagine a day more exactly split between pleasure and discomfort. Everything before mid-day is a joy. We luxuriate through a final Cuban breakfast of fresh fruit and coffee at our semi-outdoor dining room, followed by a farewell tour to our ...

Final Day
Jan 23, 2007 (2 photos)

Tuesday is our best day in Havana. We're out early and back for a siesta before the early afternoon heat. Cuba's a great country for kids, with its languid tempo. Our destination this morning is the Capitolio Nacional, a vast domed structure many times the ...

The magnificent and the crumbling...
Jan 9, 2007 (75 photos)

... , Verdado, the bizarre, star shaped monument overlooking the carpark that is the Plaza de la Revolucion.  But Cuba, to me, and especially Havana as its cultural and politial centre - more than most places I've travelled, covers itself with layer after ...

Vedado
Feb 20, 2007 (7 photos)

... . We try giving her a mouthful of water. Nothing stays down. This continues for hours. Poor Rosemary spends her first day in Cuba a hostage in her own hotel room. In the end, the hotel doctor gives Lucy an injection of some Gravol-like substance and we ...

Socialist Cuba on a communist budget
Apr 19, 2006 (3 photos)

... and glanced at my ticket and passport while asking me where I was headed. Donning a silly grin I responded "Havana?" half stating and half questioning. "Cuba?" she asked, looking me suspiciously in my nervous eyes. "Sí," I sweated. I figured she was ...

Socialist Cuba on a communist budget part 2
Apr 21, 2006 (3 photos)

... and passport for any reason I would be shit out of luck. The US has no embassy in Cuba to replace passports and the US Interests Section in Havana wouldn't have much sympathy for a man who snuck into Cuba illegally. They would probably send me straight ...

Finally, a moment of calm
Jan 18, 2007 (2 photos)

... this trip -- no early morning flights, no plans to do anything other than slow, easy drifts about the island of Cuba. But Lucy's odd, unidentified illness, which has seen her temperature spike to 40 degrees Celsius since arriving here yesterday, has its ...

The long day
Feb 24, 2007 (13 photos)

... look at the Che mural on the exterior of the Ministry of the Interior building. There are a lot more intersting places in Havana. I certainly have no interest taking the elevator for a view of it all from 150m up the Memorial Jose Marti. The Necropolis ...

Running into people all over the world.
May 11, 2008

... my eyes so I had to ask Ross, and indeed it was her! Pretty funny to run into people you know at the airport in Havana! It was a long travel day back to Kingston, but we have a fantastic week to look forward to, since we're getting married on Saturday ...

The Cuban Timewarp
Oct 13, 2008 (39 photos)

... does not come to mind... I was expecting to enter the "time warp" I've been hearing about upon stepping off the plane in Cuba, but the airport in Havana is not worse than some of the places we've been to on our trip and it did not really seem like an " ...

Return to Havana
May 9, 2008 (2 photos)

When we arrived in Havana after our 15 hour bus trip, our stomachs were still a bit uneasy, which contributed to our decision to stay at the Nacionale for the last two days of our honeymoon (pre-wedding). We knew that we were getting married in about a ...

The Lost Day
Feb 21, 2007 (5 photos)

... before dinner; we walk into the warm, dark neighbourhoods of Vedadao. Less than a kilometer from the clustered chaos of central Havana, these tranquil tree-lined streets could be in another country -- at least another city. Our first choice for dinner, a ...

shopping
Jan 19, 2007 (4 photos)

... me feeling like I´m walking around with ¨Steal my moneybelt¨ printed on my shirt until I adjust. Besides CUCs (pesos convertibles), Cuba has monedad nacional (pesos) which are worth 1/24th the value and are used by Cubans in a parallel economic system. ...

Talkin bout a revolution!
Jul 26, 2003 (10 photos)

... go back to the pool for a nap before meeting Johan and his girlfriend at Chaplin Cine. The film we saw, "Suite Havana", was a silent film that documented the life of typical cuban citizens. Very moving, and moreover, extrememly controversial because it ...