A glimpse of Cuba (2)

Day 3: Havana

Museo de la Revolucion > Bacardi Building > La Floridita > Parque Central > Hotel Nacional de Cuba > Revolution Square > Ernest Hemingway's House

Museo de la Revolucion

The next morning, after checking-out of our casa particular, we immediately headed to the Museo de la Revolucion (Museum of the Revolution). We had dropped by the building the day before when we walked around Havana on our own, and the security guard told us it would open at 9:00am. We arrived just a little after 9:00am and the museum was still not opened, there were also a few other tourists waiting outside the front door.

This is actually very typical Cuban culture, they don't have a very strong concept of time. They will open later if they are not ready and they will close earlier than usual if they don't have any visitors. It's funny that they also change the "opening hours" stickers because when we checked the time at the front door the day before I purposely checked to see that it said 9:00am, but when we got there that morning, the time had changed to 9:30am.....

Also at our resort, we went to the buffet hall expecting that there should be stuff to eat at 7:00am (as we had to leave the resort early to start making our way to Havana), but we arrived two mins before 7:00am and they wouldn't let us in to even wait.... so I stood outside the door and watched my iPhone and once the numbers showed 7:00, I knocked on the door, but the manager still wouldn't let me in.... he said his phone shows that it's not 7:00 yet.... 4 more mins he said, so I waited another four minutes and knocked again! He grudgingly unlocked the door and let us in..... Their lack of time management really annoyed me.

 

above left: wax figures of Camilo Cienfuegos (left) and Ernesto "Che" Guevara (right) during the National Liberation War

Anyways.... hehehe... the Museo de la Revolucion was the one museum in the city of Havana and the whole entire Cuba trip that I wanted to visit because it's supposed to give a very good explanation of what happened in Cuba in the mid-20th Century, unfortunately..... The museum actually houses quite a lot of artifacts from the revolution, it's just a shame that we could not understand the significance of these as most of the exhibits were only in Spanish. They had a little bit of English but not enough to give a lot of information. The museum is also in the previous Presidential Palace so the exterior of the building is very grand, but I find the interior not as well-kept. They were doing a bit of refurbishing to one of the larger rooms in the front of the house, it had a large painted ceiling.

Afterwards, we walked to the Bacardi Building (below images). This is one of the many well-maintained buildings from the 20th Century.  Bacardi used to be produced locally in Cuba until the US Embargo on Cuba and then they moved to the States. Now it is an office building, but people still visit it because of the unique Art Deco architecture. At the top of the building's spire is the Bacardi's bat logo. This building was Havana's tallest building for quite some time.

Then we made a quick stop at La Floridita, another watering hole of Ernest Hemingway's for their Daiquiris.

Jose Marti statue in Parque Central

A block up from La Floridita is the Central Park (Parque Central) where we can see lots of historical and iconic buildings. Hotel Inglaterra (the first hotel in Havana), Gran Teatro (the Grand Theatre in Havana with it's grand architecture), El Capitolio (The Capitol building - former parliament, but now it seems to be under constant renovation and not open to visitors.... why can't they renovate the building in parts and open it up to visitors partially?).

above left: Hotel Inglaterra

above right: Gran Teatro

below: El Capitolio

El Capitolio looks exactly like the Capitol Building in Washington in the USA because they copied it, it's even designed by an American Architect. El Capitolio is slightly bigger than the American Capitol Building.... they even copied the name... couldn't they have named it something else? It just shows how much the Cubans were influenced by American designs and culture in the 20th Century.

Around Parque Central you will see lots of vintage American classic cars parked or moving around, this is a great place to take some photos of them. But you'll actually see these classic cars all over Cuba, although they may not look as shiny.  :P

 above: classic cars lined up in front of the Gran Teatro

below: students outside a high school, education in completely free, including university

Our next stop was the Nacional Hotel de Cuba, this is a hotel that many dignitaries and celebrities stayed at in the 20th Century. Even recently when foreign dignitaries visit Cuba - e.g. China's President and Canada's President, they have stayed in the hotel. It was once the Best Hotel in Cuba/Havana, and while it's still well maintained, there are new hotels that are opening up around Havana and they will probably be able to offer even better comfort than the Hotel Nacional.

Also during my research, the Cuban Sandwich - which I've heard of in American is actually not a Cuban dish/sandwich. There's no such sandwich in Cuba, but at the Nacional Hotel you can order a Cuban Sandwich (apparently, but I didn't order one). When we asked our guide about it, he said that in Cuba they don't have the "Cuban Sandwich" which we might know of in North America, but their sandwich is like a round bun that is stuffed with a few slices of ham and cheese. I saw one of these little shops selling them..... (click to enlarge photo on the right)

 

above: photos of dignitaries who stayed at Hotel Nacional

(top right is Jiang Zemin, Previous Chinese President; second row on the right is Jean Chretien, Previous Canadian Prime Minister)

 

We enjoyed a drink at the hotel's bar and in the room you will see lots of photos of celebrities who have stayed at the hotel. After a drink, we walked out into the hotel's garden and at the far end is a museum about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Actually this didn't show up on my research about the hotel, but our tour guide brought us there and there are not many tourists there, I guess because no one knew about it.

There are a couple of boards up on the walls describing what led to the Missile Crisis and how Russia shipped over 14 missiles. It also talked about how the USA responded. Then an old man who works there looking after the trenches took us on a tour in the covered trenches/tunnels. It reminds me a bit of the Cu Chi Tunnels in Vietnam, but these were not as extensive. Also the areas were quite small, but they said that it was supposed to fit 300 people!

 

Afterwards, we drove to Vedado - a suburb of Havana that has the Revolution Square. It's just a huge open square with a single "tower" in the middle (I find that this seems really common in Communist countries, there are lots in China and Russia). It's supposed to fit a million people there. Facing the square are also murals of Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos - two people who were very close to Fidel Castro and the three of them started and led the Revolution in Cuba.

 above left: mural of Che, with his infamous quote "Hasta la victoria siempre"

(means something similar to "until victory forever")

above right: mural of Camilo Cienfugoes - who faught alongside Che and Fidel Castro.

Castro always asked Camilo "Voy Bien?" during his speeches and this is Camilo replying "Vas Bien Fidel"

(means "Am I doing well?" and Camilo replies "You're doing well, Fidel")

After lunch at a lookout where you can see the cityline and malecon of Havana, we went to Ernest Hemingway's house. It's on the way back to Varadero, somewhere between Havana and Varadero. His house has been donated to the Cuban Government and is now open to tourists. The house is not overly large, but it is very nice and by today's standard in Cuba, it's quite luxurious. He even had a pool and a tower built where he had his privacy to write.

 above photos: Hemingway's house, the setting looks like it's from a magazine shoot

As we got closer to Varadero, I asked our tour guide to stop along the beach so that we could take photos with our classic car.

Day 4: Varadero

Swimming in the ocean > Resort hopping > Relaxing in the swimming pool

The next day we spent a day at our resort enjoying time just soaking in the water and sun. Unfortunately we were so caught up in resort hopping we forgot to take photos!!!! So I actually don't have any nice sunny photos of the beach and water :(

The resorts are literally right next to each other, so we all share the same strip of shoreline. We decided to walk over to the next resort and see how different it might be. We sneaked in to use their pool, got a drink and then walked out and grabbed an ice cream on the way. We ended up going to like four more hotels and it was fun, but our feet were burning every time we walked on the sand and the walkways - we went on this adventure without our flip flops! Plus I lost my sunglasses in the waves.... but still it was a lot of fun.

In the end, our conclusion is that from the outside all resorts look pretty much the same. The drinks are all watered down and some are even warm..... :( At least our resort served drinks cold! like slushie pina coladas!

We went back to our swimming pool and lazed around some more, then went to dinner. We walked out to the beach after dinner as the sun was setting....