Our man in Havana

As the island responsible for almost turning the Cold War hot and the adopted country of everyone’s favourite revolutionary Che Guevara, Cuba definitely punches above its weight in terms of infamy.

Che

 

In recent years, the island has become famous for more than its politics.  Holiday companies have discovered the Caribbean beaches and Castro has discovered the value of tourism. 

 

But there is more to see in Cuba than all-inclusive beach hotels.  A trip to Havana will open up a world of Castro propaganda, colonial architecture and more than a hint of old American glamour played out along the city’s sweeping bay.

 

Havana is three cities rolled into one, each seemingly from a different era.  Old Havana is an UNESCO World Heritage Site and has benefited from huge investments to maintain its Spanish colonial architecture.  The beautiful white buildings and narrow, cobbled streets open up into plazas where you can drink a beer and watch colourful, old ladies smoking huge cigars and socialist literature being sold at bookstalls.

 

Just a few streets away from the time warp that is Old Havana you are thrown into Central Havana where Coco taxis, egg-shaped, three-wheeled vehicles that zip between the traffic, drop you wherever you need for a bargain price. 

 

This bustling and run-down area of the city hosts the old-world hotels of Graham Greene novels, still standing in faded elegance half a century later.  The old Prado, once the most beautiful boulevard in Havana, is now lined by crumbling buildings with pro-Castro banners draped from the windows and the seafront properties look at least a hundred years older than they are. 

 

The third district of Havana, Vedado could not differ from its neighbours more.  It was the centre of gambling and gangsters in the days of the American prohibition and the hotels are tourist attractions in themselves.

 

Infamous gangster Meyer Lanksy used to own the Havana Riviera hotel and the old Hilton was where Castro set up camp when he first entered Havana with his army.  Cool down with a mojito in the Hotel Nacional, by far the most famous in Cuba, where the likes of Frank Sinatra and Winston Churchill stayed in its American heyday.

Hotel Nacional: The hotel of choice for celebrities, politicians and gangsters

 

 

 

 

Only in Havana does the gangster glamour of old America sit alongside Caribbean socialism and colonial Spanish architecture, the city truly represents the cultural mix that has made Cuba what it is today.  So it is well worth leaving that sunlounger for a couple of days to explore this city of contrasts where some of the major events of the 20^th Century played out.