La Habana

Last minutes plans came together for a ten day trip to Cuba, three days Havana, three days Vinales, three days Trinidad - and that's the town Trinidad, not the island of Trinidad and Tobago, and a couple of travelling days here and there.

It's hot in Cuba, so hot, we spent a lot of time moving from one sitting location to the next, people watching, listening to any music that was playing out of near by restaurants. Habana, and the other places in Cuba we visited, have the faint smell of cigar smoke lingering around. 

I really liked the people in Cuba, the men are hot and flirty, though not in a sleezy way. Sitting on a bench, a lady approached us as started talking and then let us know she could get us 'good cigars', generally, I knew people talking to us wanted to sell us something, everyone knew someone who could get us something. But they did it such a way that didn't come across like it did in a country like Egypt or Vietnam. You tip in Cuba and I actually felt like I wanted to give it to them. 

An afternoon sitting session at the Hotel National coincided with lunch, the first of many a ham and cheese sandwich, accompanied by something rum based. Piña colada, mojito, Cuba Libre, daiquiri - permanent fixtures throughout the trip, I will hence forth be choosing Havana Club as my rum of choice. The various plaza's in the old town were perfect places to sit, as were the small parks or anywhere shady. Any of the steps around the Capitolio building are not good places to sit and you get moved on pretty sharpish by the security guards. 

Haggling doesn't really work, prices seems to have been standardised amongst the taxi drivers. We were hassled, 'taxi?', generally people understood we meant no and moved on.

As most guide books will say, don't go for the food, it get quite same same and there isn't a lot of variety when eating out as it's such a luxury and basically for the tourists. Our hotel is famous for paella, having had it compete and place in the International Paella Contest in Spain. I tried it while I stayed there and didn't think it was so special.

Sarah described Habana as '...a run down Europe', I agree, Habana has beautiful buildings, some of which have seen better days. No one rushes in Cuba, it was extremely easy to slide into this relaxed city and watch the world go by with a rum cocktail - of course. More photos here.