Gran Caribe Hotel Saint John's Havana

... a while, then coco taxied it back to our casa, grabbed our bags and headed to the bus terminal. We were expecting the worst, as we have become accustomed to during our many bus journeys, but we were pleasantly surprised. The buses were on time, clean and airconditionedª Of course they were only for tourists and we paid through the nose for the privilege. 3.5 hours laters, 2 minutes AHEAD of schedule we arrived in Viñales = tobacco growing ...

... entertaining as overbooking resulted in some people sitting in the flight staff seats for the whole flight. At least there were none standing.  Anyway, a 24 hour transit with overpriced and underperforming airport lobbies, delays and no working movies in flight is never going to put you in the right frame of mind when arriving in a new country. I think the first day in Havana I was so jet lagged that I should have stayed in bed. In fact that was the reason we decided ...

... lush countryside and up above at the scorching sun, and once again I admired the farmers' tenacity in today's ever modernising world. ALEJANDRO (SANTIAGO DE CUBA) - SHOESMITH After months of pounding different pavements, my beloved CAT boots began to show their age as the soles were on the verge of falling off. I entered a local shoe repair shop and handed over the offending boot to one of the workers. A tall, dark and bespectacled Cuban man emerged from behind ...

... often about baseball). The people of Cuba have such a strong defined character. They are shy by no means and are not intimidated by tourists waddling through the backstreet's gawking at their comings and goings. Every face tells a different story and the Cuban people wear their stories proud. Every where you look you are faced with an orgy of detail from the architecture to the people. This is the most amazing and memorable thing about Havana and Cuba for me. On the last night in ...

... de te dire que c'est leur anniversaire pòur t'extorquer un dollar, ou quand, perdu sur une route de champagne a velo, un type sort d'un buisson avec des cigars pour nous les vendre, on ne peut s'empecher de bien se marrer. Ce qui est sur c'est qu'a Cuba, en tant que touriste, il ne peut rien t'arriver: les Cubains risquent tellement gros s'il t'arrive un truc qu'a part essayer de t'entuber ils peuvent rien faire. Ce qui tend a nuire à la qualité de ...

... beauty of Trinidad. I know I'm in a special place. The bus stops in a small parking lot with a throng of friends, family, casa particular owners, jineteros and jineteras waiting for the passengers to disembark. Aleida had called ahead from Havana so that my casa particular host would be waiting for me, to escort me to the home, for fear that I would be intercepted by a jinetero. A jinetero is a street hustler, though I find it too sinister of a ...

... I've never managed I yet). The whole meal was well prepared, well served (I spotted waiters from several different restaurants, all recruited in for the evening and some of them even nearly smiled!) and delicious. A very competent (8 piece?) band played during dinner with music from Beatles to Glenn Miller to Cuban. After dinner there was a very professionally staged show that included singers and dancers with an astonishingly varied content from (much) Cuban to 'Chicago', 'Phantom ...

... afterwards). A word about my casa particular. The alternative to state-run hotels are the casa particulares: people can apply to host tourists. If they are granted authorisation, they have to pay a fixed amount to the state, monthly, whether they have guests or not. They have to declare their guests, of course, and they are allowed only a limited number of tourists (two rooms of two, I read somewhere). The people running casa particulares or paladares (local restaurants opened ...

... domingo, estava fechado, então fomos ao museu de la revolución . Bem interessante, mas puxando a sardinha para o lado de Cuba, afinal de contas estamos em Havana e não em Washington. Mas vimos também que antes do Fidel se tornar esse ditador antiquado que é hoje, ele deu a cara pra bater e participou extrema e ativamente das guerrilhas ...

... us. As our table was also four foreign men, though with no female companions, we were attracting some unwanted attention from those we could only surmise to be the women’s pimps. It was becoming rather uncomfortable and, as we were all not keen dancers and had by this stage heard enough of the band, we hastily bid a retreat just as the show was reaching its crescendo and most people at the other tables were hitting the dance floor below the stage.