Cuba

[The Kilt]

Wonder if anybody can give me pointers, tips on Cuba?

Spending 9 days in Havana and really looking forward to seeing this amazing place.

any info welcome!

[derekfaejapan]

I went to Havana for about 9 days back in 2007 and I can honestly say it's the worst place I've ever been to. The locals are 'over friendly' and will just generally hassle you whenever you stay still for long enough, a question you will get asked many times there is 'Do you have any newspapers from your country?'...And if you fancy a quiet pint by yourself then forget it, you'll soon have a few folk crowding around you...That probably makes me sound like a miserable basturt but after a few days it completely wore me out. Havana has quite a big Chinatown and it's worth visiting.

I hope you have a better experience than I did.

[AlfieMoon]

Wonder if anybody can give me pointers, tips on Cuba?

Spending 9 days in Havana and really looking forward to seeing this amazing place.

any info welcome!

I'm going there in exactly 2 weeks time 8 nights.

Booked a Casa Particular (equivalent of a B& in Vedado in the west of Havana. It's the embassy / student district and is not too far to walk or by cab to Old Havana, passing through Central Havana on route. Accomodation was 30CUC ($30) per person. per night.

I'll have a better idea of it obviously in a few weeks time but let me know if there's anything specific you were wanting to try and find out about.

Unfortunately we're missing the baseball season as I'd have loved to have seen a game.

Carnival is August I think, so again - we're missing that.

We're generally just hoping to explore the life of the city, try as much food and drink as possible and avoid the touristy trap stuff as much as we can.

Things I've looked at are:

- Trip on the Hershey Train

- Day trip across to Regla on the ferry

- Beach at Playa del Este

- Going to one of the boxing gyms to watch the boxers train

- Nights at the Malecon seafront wall which are apparently full of life

- Visit a cigar factory (not even sure if that's possible)

- A day/overnight trip to a 2nd city (still to decide)

[stocky]

you have to visit the city of Trinidad.. Fantastic wee place, Beautiful stay two days if u can.

I also went to Santiago De Cuba of for east cost over some amazing mountains.. to a cool wee town

But highlight of my 3 weeks was deffo Trinidad, beautiful streets , cafes beaches, ppeople etc , not millions of tourists, no hi rise buildings either....

they have/had a huge nightclub build ito some underground cave which was good as well.

Bus service between the main cities is quite good.

Havana has good . great and some quite horrid bits.

Seriously though

go to trinidad...

Edited May 7, 2015 by stocky

[stocky]

there is an Old traditional Irish bar in Old Havana which has a cool plaque on it saying something along teh lines of

Ireland and Cuba two Islands ruined by Colonialism ... but standing together or something like that...

Worth checking out if thats your thing

[Baz]

Wonder if anybody can give me pointers, tips on Cuba?

Spending 9 days in Havana and really looking forward to seeing this amazing place.

any info welcome!

We went to cuba on honeymoon in 2013 and loved it.

Didn't get any hassle from the locals, they all just want to chat. A few trying to take us to cigar factories but nothing too bad.

Revolution Museum was ok, bit expensive though and full of propaganda.

The majority of the bars are government owned do prices are higher than you might expect but still cheap. Food also decent but dear in comparison. My tip is to buy street food from the hatches you see on the sides of buildings and from the vendors around the city, pizzza is popular and costs pennies.

[Fairbairn]

- Trip on the Hershey Train

That sounds like a euphemism!!

[LewisEDI]

was there a few years ago, found a few days to be enough in havana, you do get a lot of people coming up to you but its friendly, its a safe city. worst country ive been for a food though, probably the best burger ive ever had was at the the hotel star hotel that has the internet that might have been because of the standard of everything else. was strange that when we were there there was barely no tourists at all, usually that would be a good thing but most of the bars were dead, just a band and the odd local. fascinating place though, we never really planned anything while we were there just wandered about so im sure you will have a more productive time.

[Auchinyell Sox Change]

Havanna & Varadero in 2003

if on a lads trip , lot of attention from the women seeking extra $

found the bar scene in havanna to be not that great ; probably seen to many films & tv commercials saying the opposite

did the authentic mojitos in el bodega medio ; an old hemingway hang out ; down a quiet side street

cigar smoking lounges were good - order from menu ; leather chair - ah mr bond etc etc

but got sick of the nightclub latino music scene every night - buena vista social club type stuff - which i used to like

am glad i've been (before the yanks wreck it) but in no rush to every visit again

[The Kilt]

Cheers for the info guys.

Really looking forward to this trip

[brixton footsoldier]

Spent a few weeks aboot 8 years ago an loved every minute. At that time it helped massively if ye had some basic Spanish and were generally up fur shootin the breeze wi random fellas an lassies..

Avoid the segregated resorts on the north coast.. We spent time in Havana then got the local buses out tae Baracoa via Cirnfuegos - Trinidad - Camaguey - Bayamo - Santiago an Guantanamo.

Trinidad an Santiago were beltin, as wis Baracoa.

You can live for nothin on the local Pesos if ye manage tae swing it, but dinnae covert too many as they last forever. Dyin tae get back one more time afore it completely opens up tae the North..

Enjoy fella!

[The Kilt]

cheers

[auldgreytoonman]

As you are in Havana for a while you could try the museum of the revolution - it`s the fancy building with the tank and plane outside - well worth a look.

Personally I would steer clear of anything to do with Hemingway and the birth of the mojito - not worth a look - amazing how many bars are the real Hemingway experience.

One thing to watch out for is the scam in the food shops or small supermarkets. A young guy will try to help or start up a conversation and eventually ask you to buy some baby milk powder for him on the grounds that it too expensive for him to buy but his young baby needs it badly. It is only a few dollars. He steers you to the counter where the shopkeeper gets a bag of the stuff down for you to buy. If you fall for it as some tourists do the bag goes straight back on the shelf ready for the next mug. Brilliant.

As someone else said Trinidad and the Ancon peninsula would be good to visit but it is quite a trek.

Look out for the peasants crammed in to the massive pink semi-trailers coming in to town from the suburbs every day.

[AlfieMoon]

As you are in Havana for a while you could try the museum of the revolution - it`s the fancy building with the tank and plane outside - well worth a look.

Personally I would steer clear of anything to do with Hemingway and the birth of the mojito - not worth a look - amazing how many bars are the real Hemingway experience.

One thing to watch out for is the scam in the food shops or small supermarkets. A young guy will try to help or start up a conversation and eventually ask you to buy some baby milk powder for him on the grounds that it too expensive for him to buy but his young baby needs it badly. It is only a few dollars. He steers you to the counter where the shopkeeper gets a bag of the stuff down for you to buy. If you fall for it as some tourists do the bag goes straight back on the shelf ready for the next mug. Brilliant.

As someone else said Trinidad and the Ancon peninsula would be good to visit but it is quite a trek.

Look out for the peasants crammed in to the massive pink semi-trailers coming in to town from the suburbs every day.

Absolutely agree with the above. We popped in to the 2 most famous Hemingway places - El Bodeguito Del Medio and La Floridita ('My mojito in La Bodeguita, My daiquiri in El Floridita' - as he said) and it's just a tourist revolving door and even those signature drinks were crap compared to getting them in normal bars.

Also experienced the baby milk powder scam and as others have said - there's a lot of hustlers in the streets, particularly in Old Havana. Everyone wants to chat so it can be difficult to adjust and start dismissing people from the off but there's a lot of people trying to punt cigars, or get a few quid one way or another. They'll often try and just engage in chat or ask where you're from and it leads on from there but you'll quickly learn how to deal with it or else just completely ignore it if you wish. Worth saying that I didn't at any point feel in danger.

Also, you'll have taxis and bicitaxis, tuk tuks all touting for your business as you walk anywhere near Old Havana.

With the crap bits above out of the way now - the vast majority of the place is great and people are lovely. We stayed in Vedado on the west of the city which was nice colonial houses, close to the university and the big hotels of The Nacional (worth checking out for a drink) and the Habana Libre (former Havana Hilton which was taken over as an initial residence of Castro et al at the revolution). There were a few nice restaurants and bars/clubs dotted around that area. We walked each day from Vedado through the much poorer areas of Central Havana where you just see people living day to day life and crammed into tiny homes.

The dividing line between Central Havana and Old Havana is at El Capitolio / Gran Teatro (Theatre) and Parque Central and here you'll get your classic cars all lined up and gleaming waiting for hire to do city tours. We didn't get much from the car tour other than the photo opps as we had pretty much walked all over the place. If you were to consider getting the open-top, hop-on hop-off bus tour - I wouldn't recommend it. It doesn't have commentary in the way that the equivalent tours would normally have whether it be in Edinburgh, Madrid or Berlin - so it's only really worthwhile for getting from point to point, but even then, it's better to just walk or get taxis. There are state taxis (normally yellow & black) and then there are 'Taxi Particulars' which are communal taxis. If you can get using them then you'll save a fortune by sharing.

We went to a cigar factory for a tour (which we had apparently missed the time or needed tickets from a hotel which we didn't have but the security got some guy to take us round and I imagine everyone got a bung from that). As mentioned previously - lots of people will try to sell you cigars. A lot of what you read will say these will be fake and not to touch them. I think the reality is that some are real (ones which make it out of factories one way or another) and others will be fake. The street sellers also have elaborate stories to draw you in - the factory staff are apparently allowed 2 cigars a day or something like that which they can accumulate to sell. They'll also say that it happens to be the 1 or 2 days a month that they're allowed to sell this stock that they've accumulated for themselves and use the term Cooperativa (Cooperative) to say that this is permitted - when in all reality there is no such thing and it's effectively stolen or fake. They'll be selling box loads rather than singles. My friend spent about £300 from one of the Cooperativa people and spent the rest of the trip stressing as to whether they were real or not. The boxes, labels, holograms and everything look legit but no way of knowing for sure - but it is over 50% cheaper. We didn't get checked at customs at all (Cuba or EU).

Other things we did were to pop into one of the boxing gyms (Rafael something or other I think it was called) but they were just training and I had the impression that it was more looking to appeal to tourists rather than being more genuine. They were also looking for donations for taking photos and stuff like that.

We get the ferry across to Casablanca and went up the hill to their equivalent of Rio's Cristo Redentor statue but it's not much in comparison. There's a Che residence there as well which isn't really worth the few dollars that it costs as you'll be in and out in less than 5 minutes. From Casablanca we got the electric train to Hershey (which was the halfway point on the way to Matanzas but we just came back). Everyone seemed to know each other on the train and we got chatting to the engineer and ended up front with the driver for the majority of it.

There's a wee Havana Club tour in Old Havana which isn't a distillery but worth 30 mins of your day I would say.

Parque Central Hotel has a nice roof terrace for food/drinks if you're into that sort of thing at somewhere a bit swankier. A lot of the bigger hotels have nice lobbies and bars and probably a lot of the tourists don't venture out of there at night as Old Havana does seem quieter as the night goes on. La Terraza was another roof-terrace restaurant in that vicinity which was good.

Lots of salsa clubs around the city and Casa de la Musica is the main name that pops up. They have early evening shows and a later one as well. We went somewhere different and was cool to see them all going for it. A fair amount of hookers in these places as well so you might get pestered a wee bit unless you're there with a missus.

A lot of the cooler bars and clubs, as well as some nice eateries are over in Miramar which is further west and maybe about 20 mins drive from Old Havana. It's the embassy district and we went to a few nice places there.

One last thing - go to to the Colon Cemetery if you would appreciate that sort of thing. It's huge and the memorials there are quite spectacular.

[The Kilt]

Absolutely agree with the above. We popped in to the 2 most famous Hemingway places - El Bodeguito Del Medio and La Floridita ('My mojito in La Bodeguita, My daiquiri in El Floridita' - as he said) and it's just a tourist revolving door and even those signature drinks were crap compared to getting them in normal bars.

Also experienced the baby milk powder scam and as others have said - there's a lot of hustlers in the streets, particularly in Old Havana. Everyone wants to chat so it can be difficult to adjust and start dismissing people from the off but there's a lot of people trying to punt cigars, or get a few quid one way or another. They'll often try and just engage in chat or ask where you're from and it leads on from there but you'll quickly learn how to deal with it or else just completely ignore it if you wish. Worth saying that I didn't at any point feel in danger.

Also, you'll have taxis and bicitaxis, tuk tuks all touting for your business as you walk anywhere near Old Havana.

With the crap bits above out of the way now - the vast majority of the place is great and people are lovely. We stayed in Vedado on the west of the city which was nice colonial houses, close to the university and the big hotels of The Nacional (worth checking out for a drink) and the Habana Libre (former Havana Hilton which was taken over as an initial residence of Castro et al at the revolution). There were a few nice restaurants and bars/clubs dotted around that area. We walked each day from Vedado through the much poorer areas of Central Havana where you just see people living day to day life and crammed into tiny homes.

The dividing line between Central Havana and Old Havana is at El Capitolio / Gran Teatro (Theatre) and Parque Central and here you'll get your classic cars all lined up and gleaming waiting for hire to do city tours. We didn't get much from the car tour other than the photo opps as we had pretty much walked all over the place. If you were to consider getting the open-top, hop-on hop-off bus tour - I wouldn't recommend it. It doesn't have commentary in the way that the equivalent tours would normally have whether it be in Edinburgh, Madrid or Berlin - so it's only really worthwhile for getting from point to point, but even then, it's better to just walk or get taxis. There are state taxis (normally yellow & black) and then there are 'Taxi Particulars' which are communal taxis. If you can get using them then you'll save a fortune by sharing.

We went to a cigar factory for a tour (which we had apparently missed the time or needed tickets from a hotel which we didn't have but the security got some guy to take us round and I imagine everyone got a bung from that). As mentioned previously - lots of people will try to sell you cigars. A lot of what you read will say these will be fake and not to touch them. I think the reality is that some are real (ones which make it out of factories one way or another) and others will be fake. The street sellers also have elaborate stories to draw you in - the factory staff are apparently allowed 2 cigars a day or something like that which they can accumulate to sell. They'll also say that it happens to be the 1 or 2 days a month that they're allowed to sell this stock that they've accumulated for themselves and use the term Cooperativa (Cooperative) to say that this is permitted - when in all reality there is no such thing and it's effectively stolen or fake. They'll be selling box loads rather than singles. My friend spent about £300 from one of the Cooperativa people and spent the rest of the trip stressing as to whether they were real or not. The boxes, labels, holograms and everything look legit but no way of knowing for sure - but it is over 50% cheaper. We didn't get checked at customs at all (Cuba or EU).

Other things we did were to pop into one of the boxing gyms (Rafael something or other I think it was called) but they were just training and I had the impression that it was more looking to appeal to tourists rather than being more genuine. They were also looking for donations for taking photos and stuff like that.

We get the ferry across to Casablanca and went up the hill to their equivalent of Rio's Cristo Redentor statue but it's not much in comparison. There's a Che residence there as well which isn't really worth the few dollars that it costs as you'll be in and out in less than 5 minutes. From Casablanca we got the electric train to Hershey (which was the halfway point on the way to Matanzas but we just came back). Everyone seemed to know each other on the train and we got chatting to the engineer and ended up front with the driver for the majority of it.

There's a wee Havana Club tour in Old Havana which isn't a distillery but worth 30 mins of your day I would say.

Parque Central Hotel has a nice roof terrace for food/drinks if you're into that sort of thing at somewhere a bit swankier. A lot of the bigger hotels have nice lobbies and bars and probably a lot of the tourists don't venture out of there at night as Old Havana does seem quieter as the night goes on. La Terraza was another roof-terrace restaurant in that vicinity which was good.

Lots of salsa clubs around the city and Casa de la Musica is the main name that pops up. They have early evening shows and a later one as well. We went somewhere different and was cool to see them all going for it. A fair amount of hookers in these places as well so you might get pestered a wee bit unless you're there with a missus.

A lot of the cooler bars and clubs, as well as some nice eateries are over in Miramar which is further west and maybe about 20 mins drive from Old Havana. It's the embassy district and we went to a few nice places there.

One last thing - go to to the Colon Cemetery if you would appreciate that sort of thing. It's huge and the memorials there are quite spectacular.

Alfiemoon

Thanks for spending time on your post mate. Great info. We head off next week. I will piss myself laughing if we come across the baby food scam.

cheers

The Kilt