Kohly Havana

... soon). Also discovered main ice cream parlour where every local seems to eat called Coppelia, queues were ...

... being made, but all I could think about during it was I wonder how many workers die of lung cancer !!!

Knowing that everything is closed on a Monday, to our amazement, the Capitolo was open. We walked around checking out various rooms, even finding the assembly hall. It kind of reminded me a bit of Bucharest. Huge palace and the rest of the place falling down around it. Still, it was impressive !!!

After lunch, we went back to ...

... is similar but with a different emphasis- that nomadism (nomadicism?) is not only normal but healthy, put of our psychological and biological makeup, of vast frontiers and open skies. We didn't just accidentally disperse all over the globe- we were driven, by the powerful engines of our imagination. Obesity is not much of a problem with this lifestyle, nor are mortgages. True, cities are a great repository of great art and the great artifacts of ...

... basket and ended with bread and wine shared with the entire congregation. During lunch we celebrated Jovana's birthday, the Caravanista who turned eight years old. After lunch, a small group of us was introduced to historically significant sites in old Havana. With a guide we saw the Plaza de Armas, a lush and shady and cool park, site of used ...

... Cuba into the U.S. But did this stop us? Nope. We ended up buying a few cohibas. There's nothing more exciting than knowing that living on the edge. Ooooh!!! Scary!!! Ok, it's not at all uncommon for people to smuggle in cohibas. You just have to change the little band on the cigar and the customs officers have no way to prove that they are Cubans. Easy enough. At any rate - we made it to Old Havana. A familiar site since we've ...

... worried, how was he expecting me to pay for these, you know? But in the end he brought out about 4 different types, laid them out on the bed, I got a box for me and a box for dad, the buy put the stickers on them - the type they give you in the store, and away we went. $70 dollars a box, bargain.) So yes, there are some nice things about Havana, like being able to afford to stay in a 5 star hotel, eat at 5 star restaurants, but it's unsettling to be eating your ...

... with a short length of heavy gauge wire in his hand. He's receiving delicate ignition instructions, I assume, in Spanish from the head conductor sitting behind the wheel, inside the cab. He's touching the wire and closing the circuit between two metal terminals...spark...low grumble...spark...grumble...spark...mor e grumbling that crescendos into a whirring roar, making the earth tremble beneath my feet. "Subete, por favor" he yells at me over the ...

... and education, and all the other free services it offers the population if it increases the salaries of those employed in those sectors. But then how do you incentivise people to become professors or nurses when you don't have a stash of natural resources to pay for them? A market economy exists in Cuba, in every single strand of the economy - from education and food to prostitution. Yes, it is a black economy, but it is huge, and growing, being fed by tourism and ...

... was a taxi: hitchhiking is very common in Cuba, as I had read and as I could see during the transfer to Havana. The taxi lady picked up a guy, her husband it as it turned out, and they engaged in a small street to change seats: she is the one accredited as a taxi, with authorization to get tourists from the airport, but he does the driving! They gave me advice for things to see and to be careful about, and displayed their whole range of services, from citytour to 24h pickup to ...

... in the present tense; I caught a cab back one night in this manky old Polish-built Fiat 500 with a driver who looked like Che Guavara's love-child. As the car staggered to a halt every few hundred yards, he's mutter about it being a "socialist piece of ****" and how he "needed an Audi", and then in the same breath turned to me and so said "so, what do people in Europe think of Cuba and the revolution?" How do you do politely say that we don't actually think ...