After the last bus ride, we were more than happy to take a taxi back to Havana, so that's how we arrived, having sped up the main highway under a huge sky, sometimes full of lightning and rain, sometimes sunny and blue. We'd insisted on one with air-conditioning, so we didn't try opening the windows for the first half of the journey - what a relief to let our speed do some proper cooling on the second half! We passed rice paddies, sugar cane, big fodder grasses like ones we'd seen in Western Kenya, and a huge (guava?) orchard with enormous piles of stones every hundred metres, presumably dug out of the ground the trees stood in. The roads are not so busy in Cuba, and it was a shame we had too full a car to offer a lift to anyone at the well organised hitch-hiking stands outside each town and by each major junction.
On arrival in Cuba, we'd stayed in Vedado - this time we made sure we were right in the centre of Havana, again with friendly hosts, this time in a flat that reminded me a little of my gran's (now my aunt's) London flat, and which had belonged to the family since it was new, two years before the 1959 revolution. There were no powercuts, though the lifts were out of order much of the time ...
We were in a great location (we have the address and phone number if anyone wants it!) - our first night we walked past Central Park to the Capitolio (like the one in Washington DC, but with better detailing, apparently), and on to Chinatown for a reasonable chinese meal, before strolling up to the Malecon (seafront), and back home down the Prado.
Tuesday, we got filled in on Cuban history at the Museo de la Revolucion (in the old Presidential Palace), went back to the Capitolio to use the internet and eat tuna sandwiches, and hung out in the Cubans' shopping area of San Rafael before heading home for a siesta. In the evening, four cinema tickets (The Terminal), four street pizzas, and loads of ice-cream came to about 50p.
Wednesday, we did Havana Vieja (the old town) - after another brief internet stop off at the Capitolio. We walked up Calle Obispo to Plaza de la Catedral - and discovered a huge craft market right next door. While H and Mo checked that out, Rosa and I watched a man and his dogs, mascots of the Pilla chocolate company.
On a green just round the corner, we came across the Giganteria street-theatre troupe working on their circus skills - I managed to say hi and have a quick unicycle, and left disappointed that we were leaving the country before their show at the weekend. There were more stilt-walkers and musicians passing the book stalls in the Plaza de Armas - but the Plaza San Francisco was less interesting, and though the Plaza Vieja was pretty, the photography gallery we were looking for was shut for renovations, and the playing card museum was pretty small and uninteresting. The camera oscura was good though - the guide/operator even pointed out her ex-husband clearing tables in a cafe across the square!
After another siesta, we spent our final evening in Cuba on the malecon: eating at the Asturia Club, watching the sun go down, listening to a trovador singing to his friends, and enjoying the noisy, active, cooperatively-competitive spectacle of Cubans fishing off the harbour wall, rushing all together to a better spot whenever one spotted a shoal of fish in the fading light.
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