Exploration

July 8
The sun was shining through my flimsy curtains telling me it was time to get up and explore this new city and country. I looked out my 13th floor window and took in the early morning activity of Havana below. I wondered if they were just getting up or if people were still up from the night before. Forget New York, this is the real city that doesn’t sleep.

My morning view

Doing my morning ritual journaling, reading, and just centering myself, I felt excited and happy about this place. I walked out to the beautiful terrace to meet other guests enjoying their breakfast. I said hello to Romano and the rest of the family and waited while they prepared my delicious breakfast. In the meantime I made friends with Andreas, a Cuban-American who teaches in the U.S. and brings a group of students down here to teach them Public Health, Healing, and Humanities. As this unfolded in his introduction, I couldn’t help but smile and think, the Universe does provide when you let go. It was my turn for the elevator pitch...his jaw dropped open. “Nicole! This is perfect, I would love for my students to listen to you and hear your perspective. Can you come spend time with us?” He was in a rush to get to class but we promised to touch base later today and figure out the details.

My delicious breakfast and delightful Cuban coffee were awaiting me. I gobbled down the freshly cut mango, papaya, and pineapple and pretty much chugged the fresh guava juice. Breakfast is one of my favorite meals of the day, if you can’t tell. Anyway, fully nourished I descended down to street level to explore the city. As cheesy as it sounds I had heard good recommendations for the hop-on-hop-off tour here which luckily picked up right down the street. I know this screams tourist to people, but I’ve done this a couple of times in cities in which I lived and I love it. It’s fun to be a tourist and you get to learn a lot of fun factoids about the city you’re are touring.

Some fancy monument

Enjoying the ride!

I boarded the little bus around Havana and went straight for the top to get the bird’s eye view. Like I said, usually you learn little tidbits about the city, but I quickly found out their announcer sounded more like Charlie Brown’s teacher. ...wahwah wah wah wah wahwah. I could make out the occasional Cuba in there. Oh well. We cruised by some rather large buildings with Che and Fidel marked on the outside, some large memorial, a cemetary, a university, a lot of fancy hotels including the Copacabana none of which I knew the significance.
 
The best part of the tour really was seeing the street life. Kids playing soccer in the alleys, people out walking everywhere, teenagers in their school uniforms, old men sitting on the sidewalk playing chess while old ladies were hanging laundry from their balconies (I’m a little obsessed with laundry in other countries...I think it tells the real story of a country to see what their undies look like ;) ). 

The local undies ;)

Love the taxis here

The local graffiti

We arrived at the parque central which looked like there was some hustle and bustle to explore so I deboarded the bus. Immediately thinking I should have brought a guidebook, I noticed that an English speaking couple was behind me so I asked if they knew what highlights were there to see. They invited me to have a beer while I looked at their guidebook.  Perfect! This letting go thing was really working out for me.

Some quick introductions once we were seated at one of the alleyway cafes, I had just met Ruth and Jarred from some back woods town in New Zealand. They were vacationing here and in Mexico for the last month. Our one drink turned into three as we talked about our travel experiences and watched life happen around us. We laughed as we saw baskets come down from upper level windows and saw waiters place food and drinks in them and then were magically whisked away again. I call that service.

After our drinks we meandered through town and just enjoyed life. At some point Jarred was offered an opportunity to make a business transaction (read between the lines)....Ruth and I decided to wait and look around elsewhere. In the meantime two lovely ladies standing on the corner of Cuba attracted a lot of taxi offers but also offered some great people watching time. No one was in a hurry here. We sat and watched two pedi-cab drivers who, after we so nicely turned them down for a ride, resumed their chess game in their pedicab. I think they were 16 at the oldest. People weren’t solo, they interacted. They weren’t face down in their phones (and yes they had iphones there). They played and danced in the streets. They stopped to talked to each other. They smiled and laughed. They seemed happy with life.

Pedi-cab chess session

Time passed and Ruth and I were getting hungry and starting to worry we were about to have some real life “stuck abroad” episode. We went in search of Jarred. He emerged hot and sweaty from the crowd up the street recounting his woes of an almost scam. International incident averted we set our sights on food.

Apparently pizza is the thing to have here, but only when it’s from a whole-in-the-wall establishment that only takes the common Cuban pesos not the government Cuban currency. Much harder to find than you would think but we put together our Inspector Gadget and Penny skills and found the perfect place. Now to see if my Spanish could negotiate some margarita pizza. Ten minutes later we had our own personal deep dish margarita pizza that we ate on the corner while the owner of the place looked out after us.

Pizza time!

Watchful eyes of the owner

The three of us spent the rest of the day walking all over Havana, looking in shops, art galleries, and museums with interspersed beer breaks to stay hydrated in the hot sweaty environment. By early evening I needed to go back for a shower. I think I probably had sweat out my body weight and needed to rest and rehydrate with water. I said fairwell to my travel and walking buddies and wished them luck on the rest of their journey.

How the locals do it

Re-emerging back out into Havana after some rest, I was headed for the Hotel Nacional. They are apparently known for their famous mojitos (my favorite drink aside from margaritas) so obviously I had to try one before I left. I walked through the neighborhoods amazed at how huge dilapidated houses were next to even larger grandiose well preserved houses. Every home seemed to have a sundry store or mini restaurant in it to help with revenue. Every stoop also seemed to have one or two people occupying it. Eventually I arrived at the hotel, again feeling sticky with sweat and making a bee line for the bar. Mojito or not I needed a cold drink pronto.

I sat down under the shade only to get up again to take some pictures of a gorgeous sunset. I asked the guy next to me to take a picture of me with my mojito and found out that he had just arrived from London a couple of hours ago. Andy, a travel agent, had been up for over 45 hours trying to get from Bristol to Havana. His British wit and sarcasm met my dry humor and we spent the next several hours discussing travel, movies, and bucket lists appreciating the art of conversation, Cuban music, local beer, mojitos, and daquiris (did you know they were invented in Cuba?). 

It's gettin hot in here...

Before I knew it, it was 11PM. I was starving and he looked knackered. We said our good byes and I set off for one of the recommended restaurants wondering if they would be open. Lots of people were still out on the streets even in the quieter neighborhoods I was walking through. Turns out that I had nothing to worry about. This town truly doesn’t sleep and you can find pretty much anything at any hour. I could get used to this.