Havana for the 50th!

Here's a short, quick and dirty review...

Walked about all day, every day. The work being done to restore the old city is quite spectacular, the innovative funding interesting, the fact that it almost appears as though the City Historian is running the entire city is pretty entertaining (to someone who trained as an historian and wore the old 'Earn Big Money, Become a Historian' t-shirt with enthusiasm and bitterness). :-)

NEW YEAR'S EVE - 50th Anniversary of the Revolution:

New Year's was fun. The usual walk, then a fairly sedate dinner and watching the fireworks from near the harbour.

On the way home we had to run the gauntlet of residents throwing buckets on water on everyone passing beneath on the narrow street. Got well soaked.

Much fun. Cuban tradition.

More fun was getting back up to our apt. and out on the balcony and doing the same to many, many people for several hours, glass of rum in hand (wine in Geri's case and she preferred large squeezable water bottles, more accurate than my bucket). Got to know our neighbours all around and across as we'd co-operate in pointing out where people were hiding.

At one point some tourist spoilsports got two cops to try and convoy them through. HA! I'm thinking either the cops were just going through the motions or thought it would be funny to say to them "Yeah, sure, we can get you through, just follow us and make sure you walk down the centre of the street in plain view".

50th anniversary celebrations very muted. Anything too exciting would have been seen as inappropriate as the hurricane recovery process is far from complete.

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Camera may have gotten toasted in my soaking, but too much fun not to have a price; and besides, it's time for an upgrade anyway. :-)

Long as the memory cards weren't toasted I mean. Roughly 1300 photos.

Spent a day at the central cemetary. Great fun.

One surprise in all the fun: the food is far, far far better than expected.

Many fine little restaurants, if not exactly attractive decor-wise, have very good food. And the best and cheapest are not the privately-run ones but the co-ops and some of the state-owned spots. Very pleasant surprise and part of the City Historian's plan for the place.

Had the best paella of my life (geri gave it a rave too and she has spent much time in Spain) and some fries and great BBQ chicken on a rickety crumbling balcony overlooking the Malecon in a small state-owned restaurant in n otherwise abandoned building (for good reasons abandoned).

With three fine Cuban beers it might have cost 11Pesos (15CAD???) for the two of us to dine.

We drove around and thru Vedado and Playa/Miramar for a quick tour and to have lunch at a paladar near the Russian embassy, but spent almost all of our time in the old city. And still feel like another couple of days would have helped.

The last time we popped into Havana for a couple of days we stayed in Miramar. Fun but not the walking/poking around kind of spot Old Havana is. Among other things, a long walk between beers!

27-29 and once or twice some cloud in the early part of the day. Not much wind makes it off the ocean and into the streets, so a little sweaty on occasion, requiring us to retire into the shade for a cold beverage now and then.

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Re. where we stayed,
We would recommend it, and highly, but on the understanding that it's not a hotel and one shouldn't expect hotel-level appliances and such. We like this kind of travel a lot for our non- 'lie-down-and-read-on-the-beach-for-two-weeks-then-get-up-and-go-home' vacations. But we've recommended places we loved for people who are more into hotels and they've not enjoyed the experience. We find it's fun to interact a bit with your host, get at least a glimpse into how they live. Plus the location is almost by definition in a residential rather than commercial/touristy area, and that helps too.

And, perhaps most importantly, the much lower cost associated with this mode of accommodation makes it possible for us to travel more than we would if we stayed in even the cheapest hotel - and we get a much higher standard of accommodation for our money than we would at those cheap hotels.

We stayed in the home of a Cuban man, Juan. His casa particulare (CP) is called Juan and Maragarita's (Margarita died last April unfortunately). It's been in operation for a few years and is one of only 10 (of hundreds) that are recommended by our bible, the Lonely Planet.

I'll leave it to Geri to describe it, but basically it was exceptionally clean, fairly basic but with everything you might want except cooking facilities. It's at the top of Obispo, less than 50m from the Floridita. Not wheelchair-accessible (I'll leave it to Geri to describe just how true that statement is!). The lower of two floors, Juan lives up top, we rented to lower floor, so really it was like having our own apartment.

In case anyone is leaving soon for Havana and wants to book with Juan, his number is 867-9592. He speaks excellent English (went to uni in the US and returned to Cuba in 1959). Tell him Geri and Derek sent you...

You can also book his place through a website, but a call will cost you less than what he has to pay to the website owner for each day you stay with him. And, frankly, while we loved Juan and Juan's place, the website was not so handy. It was OK for the booking (though we were shocked at how much of what we were paying Juan was going to the website manager), but the website folks themselves were supposed to pick me up at the airport when I arrived with Geri's daughter Vicki at midnight. By 01:30 we were in a cab on our own and headed into the city. So far not even an e-mail from them about this.

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On restaurants and such,
Again we relied on the Lonely Planet. Geri and I will chat today and sort out who reviews what and start that process today. Luckily we had little snow fall while we gone and so I don't need to spend the weekend shoveling.

Restaurants-wise we stuck pretty closely to the places suggested in the Lonely Planet. The one major exception was New Year's Eve, when most places were closed, at least to us (the Spanish regional/ethnic association restaurants were open, but only to members) so we paid a fair bit for a meal that was rather unexceptional at the Cafe Europe on Obispo.

So these are just highlights. Assume the food to be good and the prices towards the inexpensive end of the spectrum if I say nothing in particular.

The best spot, I think, was what used to be the Rancho Coquito, now called Malecon 107 (which is also the address). GREAT paella, and very good eveything else, all at very, very reasonable prices. We ate on a balcony overlooking the Malecon. Our only complaint: it's only open for dinner, not lunch.

We also enjoyed several of the restaurants in the 'clubs' operated by associations of people descended from various Spanish region (Catelonia, Canaria, Adaluscia etc.).

The Cafe Prado at the bottom of the Prado on the west side, in a triangular building, introduced us to pin (pineapple) daquiris. Many of them. Yum! Reasonably good food too, and very large portions.

The O-Reilly Cafe on (you guessed it) O'Reilly had a great house special sandwich. That and a beer cost mebbe $3. Vicki had a burger for $1.35 she liked.

The Cafe Santo Domingo was good for breakfast, OK for lunch and has a GREAT bakery downstairs for bread and pastries and such. It's on Obispo across from the newish U of Havana building a block or two from Plaza de Armas.

The Cafeteria Torre la Vega (114 Obrapia) was very nice. We ate at one of the tables across the street in the park. Three meals with six beer for less than $20.

The Oasis in the Arabe Cultural Centre building gets bad reviews from the bible, but upstairs in the centre proper is a nice little restaurant. Kinda blends North African and Cuban. Not reviewed in the Lonely Planet, but quite good for lunch.

Bars?
I thought you'd never ask! The rooftop bar on the Hotel Raquel had great views but the beer was something silly...$5 I think. We stayed for one, enjoyed the view and decamped.

Ditto the roof on the Hotel Ingeterra, only the views around the architectural features of the roof are a little hard on the neck. Nice close-up view of some of the Teatro Grande though.

At the other end of the spectrum were a lot of places out of the touristy bits where the beer was at most $1.25. We even found a spot on the east side of the Museo de la Revolucion (almost directly across from the laundry van on display at the back of the museum) with $1.15 beer while Vicki and I were waiting for Geri to arrive. No name, pink with several openings onto the sidewalk. Friendly staff and regulars. Beats paying four times that over in the lobby of the Sevilla, plus you'll see no one but Cubans and the odd lost and thirsty tourist with a bit of a sense of adventure. Same could be said for many of the places where we would try and stop for a beer or a coffee or a quick lunch. The decor wasn't always what we might be used to or comfortable with at home, but it was always fun and with one, blessedly brief exception (apparently even Cuban men occasionally drink too much), we had a fine time with the regulars.

The Bar Monseratte had GREAT music in a town where great music is pretty much the standard, if that makes sense. $1.25 beer too!!!

Outside of Centro and Habana Vieja, the only place we ate at was a paladar called La Fontana, very close to the Russian embassy complex. Very nice food but it came in at something like $30-40 per person. Very, very nice food I should say. Popular with the Canadian embassy staff. This was the only paladar we ate at.

I must say that overall I was very pleasantly surprised with the quality of the food where we ate.

The only disappointment: Los Nardos (across from the Capitalino) is now closed.

Photos can be viewed at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dblackadder/s...57612055539425/