On the road - Hotel Nacional de Cuba

Hotel Nacional de Cuba, Havana, Cuba

I tend to travel modestly and don't always dedicate my travel budget to high-end hotels so when I got around to reviewing my Cuba itinerary and looked up the hotel I was to stay at in Havana the historical significance blew me away. Wow. We were booked to stay at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba where important heads of state, movie stars, revolutionaries and gangsters had stayed. I was so excited I could hardly stand it. 

After we learned what room we were to stay in (we stayed in the room Walt Disney had used), and had our welcome mojito, it was amazing to wander and absorb the history of the place. Everything was still there - walls full of black and white pictures from meetings and events, the Lansky brother's roulette wheel, Peter Frampton's guitar (?) laying out in the open with a sign asking us not to touch it. Two cannons are still in the yard. The bar on the patio was open twenty four hours a day and members of the Bueno Vista Social club play on certain nights of the week. The place was swarming - with busloads of US tourists arriving one after another. The breakfast buffet in the basement was like a United Nations of trying to please every nationality. Large patios opened to the wind blowing through the royal palms from the ocean. What a grand spot. 

The decision to build a luxury hotel was taken in the late 1920s. The American firms McKim, Mead & White and Purdy & Henderson Co., tasked with the planning and construction, completed the palatial edifice in 14 months.
The hotel exhibits an eclectic architectural style, reflecting Art Deco, Arabic references, features of Hispano-Moorish architecture, and both neo-classical and neo-colonial elements. There are even details from the centuries-old Californian style. The resulting unique example of so many schools of architecture is the most unusual and interesting hotel in the Caribbean region.

The HOTEL NACIONAL DE CUBA was opened on the night of 30 December 1930. The party to celebrate the opening, attended by leading lights of the time, was held in the ballroom.

October 1933: the hotel was bombarded, following the stationing there of officers of the army elite of the deposed president Gerardo Machado, in a revolt by lower-raking officers - Batista among them - in protest at the privileges of high office. Guests of the hotel in this decade included: Johnny Weismuller (Tarzan), Edward VIII (prince of Wales), Jack Dempsey, Tom Mix, José Mujica, Buster Keaton, Emilio Roig, Amadeo Barletta, Rita Montaner, José Raúl Capablanca, Tito Guizart, Trío Matamoros, Ñico Saquito, Errol Flynn, and the mobsters Santos Traficante (father) and Meyer Lansky. The last-mentioned arranged with Batista the future business of the casinos.

On the road - making a wish on a baby's behind

Christopher Columbus Cemetery, Havana, Cuba

One of the first stops on the way into Havana from the airport was a quick tour of the Christopher Columbus Cemetery dating back to 1698. I could have spent the week there and been content but I ran around skipping the narrated tour to see as much as I could.

Now that I am home, I have been backtracking to read and learn about what I missed listening to. The guide said that wishes would be granted if you clanked the metal ring on the tomb three times, rubbed the baby's behind, walked around the tomb and clanked the ring on the opposite side. So many wishes had been granted that the space behind the tomb was filled with tokens of gratitude. Sadly I still didn't win the lottery.

City of the Dead Holds History of Havana: A much frequented spot, elevated almost to shrine status, is the burial place of Amelia Goyri de Adot, who died in childbirth in 1901. The infant, who also died, was buried at his mother's feet. Her husband commissioned a sculpture to commemorate Amelia's death, featuring her likeness leaning on a cross, holding her child.
 According to legend, when the bodies were disinterred - after two years bodies are usually removed to make room for new corpses - the infant had allegedly moved from her feet to her chest. Skeptics say the shift might have occurred as a result of settling. Believers say it was a miracle.
 Somehow, this story has come to symbolize a mother's mystical gift for intercession on behalf of children.
 Some say you will have luck if you rub the baby's bottom; other's say if you touch her skirt. Still others are trying to figure out how the death of a mother and child can be interpreted as lucky.

On the road - Havana, Cuba

Havana, Cuba

Honey, I'm home! It won't be Charleston Daily Photo for a little while because I just got back from Cuba.

It was an amazing glimpse into a quickly changing country and I felt fortunate to be there. The colors, the vintage cars, the incredible buildings were more than I could have hoped for. We made a stop at the Christopher Columbus cemetery on the trip from the airport as if the trip had been designed personally for me. The tour we joined was coordinated by Friendly Planet and billed as the Highlights of Havana and Varadero tour. Tours are still the way most US citizens visit Cuba but we fell in with a compatible crowd with a US and Cuban guide. My daughter joined me in Miami for the adventure and we soon discovered we were one of three mother/daughter groups.

Everything we saw brought up a question and every answer brought up another question. I was amazed to discover that we were to stay at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba where Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, Tyrone Powers, Walt Disney (I stayed in his room) and Winston Churchill stayed. We sat on the back patio looking over the water with the wind blowing through the palm trees and drank the first of many mojitos. There were black and white pictures on the wall of former visitors and quirky bits of memorabilia laying out with "please don't touch" signs next to Peter Frampton's guitar and Jake Lansky's roulette wheel.

We explored old Havana, dropped by an elementary school, medical clinic and a ration store, We had a daiquiri in Hemingway's favorite bar and peeked in the windows of his home. We toured an art studio, visited with a fashion designer and ate lunch on an organic farm. We had a cigar, coffee and rum tasting at ten o'clock one morning and kept sipping rum for the rest of the week.  We ended the tour with a drive through the countryside to Varadero at a beach resort which was an eye opening experience for me. Every time I turned around I was handed another rum beverage.

US tours to Cuba still need to have some kind of cultural or people to people theme although our guide said she could work with groups with special interests. I was stunned by how many tourists were already there. Bus after bus rolled up to the spots of interest. National Geographic, university groups, Jazz groups....when we pulled out the next bus pulled in. It was the perfect time of year to be there although it rained for a few days. Few places have air conditioning so I expect summer could be miserable. We stayed healthy, ate better than expected and handed out change to pay bathroom attendants for our scraps of toilet paper.

Here is a start on a few photos. More to come!