Happy in Havana

Trip Start May 05, 2008

Trip End Oct 06, 2008

Loading Map

Map your own trip!

Map Options

Show trip route

Hide lines

Flag of Cuba Havana, Cuba
Sunday, June 29, 2008

We�d been looking forward to Cuba for some time and were excited as we checked in for our flight to Havana. The plane was a taste of things to come, it was an old Russian "hand me down" and they had adjusted the seating to squeeze in as many infidel capitalists (and their sorely needed hard currency) as possible. Our seats were right at the back, next to the toilets and no window, nice! If there had been any problems with the plane, it would have been all over, u basically stood no chance of getting out alive.

We landed in Havana and Dean desperatley tried to round up other travellers to share a taxi (no public transport to airport, Fidel�s stitch up no. 1!) Our usual luck with this sort of thing prevailed and we ended up with a rich/spoilt/clueless Russian who spoke no Spanish beyond "Gracias" and maybe "Paella"! He spent the journey into town waving around his expensive mobile and laptop and talking about buying property and gambling, neither of which are possible. He was stunned beyond belief when we said we didn�t have a mobile (Thank God, meant we didn�t have a number to give him!) He was going to stay at an expensive hotel but then decided to tag along with us and stay in a private house. Luckily a combinatuion of my rudeness and Dean�s forthrightness (shall we say) got rid of him pretty quick. He�s the kind of tourist we go out of our way to avoid, still, he saved us money on the taxi, hooray!

We checked into a private home (casa) and instantly fell in love with the old couple who owned it. I think we wrote about them and Havana briefly before, so I won�t go on but Havana was a great city and really how we imangined it to be. A bizzare combination of crumbling and decrepit buildings with a faded grandeur and cool old american cars lumbering down the streets.

Havana hotels

Previous Entry