Cuba's Vibrant Street Life & Restaurants

My last post on Cuba focuses on the vibrant street life and restaurants in the tourist areas. In Havana and other cities were there is tourism, the street life is colorful, the bars are hopping, and the restaurants are excellent. Once you leave the tourist areas, however, there is little to no street life, due to the poverty of the masses. Only tourist can afford to buy art, eat in restaurants, and drink in bars. Locals can’t afford much more than food at the market and the clothes on their backs, so the non-tourist areas are bleak.

Still, if you’re looking for a festive time and great food, there is much to appreciate, especially in Havana. It’s not cheap, but it’s reasonably priced.

Interesting Buildings I Saw In Cuba

Herman and I returned home last night. It’s great to be back in Palm Springs. We were gone only three weeks, but the last several days were spent in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I found little to like there so I began missing home. Of the three destinations—NY City, Cuba, Fort Lauderdale—Cuba was the jewel in the crown.

My only issue with Cuba was we were on a cruse that circumnavigated the island, and we spent more time of the ship than we did on the shore. The food and service onboard left much to be desired. Also, getting on and off the ship was a pain in every port because of the sheer number of people on board and the slow Cuban customs agents. I would go back to Cuba, but I would fly into Havana and stay at a hotel.

I have another set of Cuba pictures to share: The architecture and some important/interesting buildings.

More of My Time in Cuba

Next in my series in what I saw in Cuba, here are several examples of works of art and street art, which is in abundance there. 

My Time In Cuba

I’ve not been posting these first few weeks of this year because I’ve been traveling in places with little or no Internet access. Herman and I started the new year in New York City where we had a fantastic time chiming in the New Year with great Asian food and lots of walking around Manhattan. I’ve always love NY; it’s a city with fantastic energy and vitality.

On New Year’s Day we flew to Jamaica and boarded a ship for Cuba, then spent the next eight days visiting ports in Cuba. I have little good to say about the cruise ship—mediocre food, mediocre entertainment, lines for everything, filled with rude Americans—but Cuba was a fantastic display of colors and warm people and lovely, crumbling architecture. There was so much to love there.

I was expecting poverty, but what I saw was even more shocking than I was expecting. Cuba had been surviving well enough on the three billion dollar per year infusion of cash from the Soviet Union, but once the Soviet Union fell apart back in the Eighties and Nineties, that lifeline dried up, and the Cubans began to suffer extreme poverty. This US embargo is keeping the country on it’s knees with little hope of improvement.

When you see the results of this embargo first hand, you see how immoral it is, how immoral the United States is, how hypocritical all the Bible Thumpers in this country truly are. It does make one ashamed to call oneself an American.

Anyway, over the next few days, I’ll be sharing some pictures of Cuba. One of the fun things about the island are the vintage cars still in use all over the island. Here are some of my favorites.