THE AUTHOR’S NOTE:
When I started this blog, I wrote a few travelogues. So, if you’re interested in those, by all means—keep reading! 😊 However, as time went on, I shifted my focus towards travel stories and witty guide-like posts to help you plan your adventures. If you wanna know more, check out my homepage!
Havana, ooh na-na,
Half of my heart is in Havana, ooh na-na…
Nope, once it’s stuck in your head, you can’t shake it off.
And the same goes for the city itself, Havana, the capital of Cuba—one of the most unique places we’ve ever visited.
It’s a city where the past tries to catch the future and somehow can’t make it just quite yet. Maybe that’s what makes it so enchanting. We spent only two days here, but we wished we had stayed longer.
After an abundant breakfast, we headed to explore the old center of the capital.
I always fail to remember that distances are something subjective (and therefore different in every country). And, of course, instead of going right towards the city center, we went all the way around.
But this detour allowed us to see the gorgeous beach-side avenue, and we entered the city center from the seaside like proper European Conquistadores (sorry, dark humor).
Whilst wandering along the ancient cobbled streets and being constantly bombarded by offers that we ‘can’t refuse’, we suddenly heard a loud, persistent ‘Hola!!’ coming from amidst the crowd.
I wanted to turn around and give the pesky street vendor a piece of my mind when we realized that the shouts were coming from a Slovenian couple who was on the same plane as we were.
Ahh, what a small world!
Finally, we managed to introduce ourselves to one another and agreed that next time we bump into one another, we will definitely go for a mojito since our mission for today was to visit a few museums.
Well, we skipped the first museum as we hadn’t changed Euros to CUC (Cuban currency) by then. We skipped the second one as we felt it was too expensive and the third one because we felt kinda lazy. The fourth one – I’m not too sure why we skipped this one, but hey, what can you do…
But there was one we were sure we wanted to go to – the Rum Museum of Cuba. I mean, is there any better choice for the first museum on your yearlong honeymoon?!
We were lucky and arrived at the museum just five minutes before the tour was supposed to start. Or so we thought.
In reality, we came to the museum one hour and five minutes too early, as the clocks went back an hour during the night (Er – and that would also explain why we had to wait more than half an hour to get our breakfast at “8am”).
But back to the museum – the tickets cost less than $10, and the rum tasting is included.
The museum itself wasn’t that special, and the amount of rum offered to us during the tasting was quite low for Cuban standards. However, the guide was pretty entertaining, which made the whole experience quite worthwhile. Perhaps it would have been even better if we’d drunk two Cuba Libres in advance! 😀
Making the most of our designated museum day, we next visited the Museo de la Ciudad.
After paying the tickets, we were strolling along the endless corridors of the museum and were approached by tour guides, offering us a tour of a corridor, that had been blocked off to other guests.
Of course, we decided to see these marvelous hidden gems personally, not knowing that the tour guide expected a tip afterward.
You can imagine that they weren’t too happy as we “failed to give them” any pesos for moving away the rope and following us 😳 #budgettravelers
Perhaps the most pleasant attraction of the entire museum was the colorful peacock, which strolled around the courtyard.
As we decided to explore the other city quarters of the old town the next day, enjoy a delicious cocktail on the terrace of the Hotel Nacional (a famous Havana hotel once visited by the most notorious mobsters) and go on a drive with a cabriolet, we ran out of time to visit more museums.
Well, maybe next time!
Read next: Hey caballos (Cuba Travelogue 3/5)
Want to read more travelogues? Then check these out:
- Cuba – first impressions
- In search of macarons (Paris Travelogue)
- Wales – a land of sheep, rain, and grandpas
- Hiking in Ushuaia – do’s and definite don’ts
