In 2012, we were fortunate enough to take an educational tour of Cuba. It was a formal-group-based cultural tour, and although we loved Cuba, the agency we worked through (Cuba Education Tours) sold us out to a group of travelling musicians whom we were forced to listen to time and time again (we believe they comped the musicians to be on our tour and built the tour around their needs, not ours). We still remember wasting hours marooned at a university while they played yet again and schmoozed with the honchos. We vowed to never be in a similar situation again and suggest that you avoid this tour company like the plague.

While we had issues with the tour company, we still enjoyed being in Cuba and wanted to return to explore it in more depth. This time we took a somewhat less structured private learning experience that we organized through the Cuba Travel Network. They work with independent groups of people to find an itinerary that works for them, rather than take a cookie-cutter approach. They did a great job in helping us plan the trip and in execution.

Our experience began auspiciously when we landed in Havana and were the only party to be met in immigration (rather than after immigration and baggage claim where all the other guides met their parties). But a Cuba Travel Networks airport representative whisked us through a special VIP immigration booth and then into a VIP lounge, where we had a beer and worked on our computers while the representative got our bags. When we joined her, we breezed through the customs line and met our driver, who took us directly to our hotel. Fast and easy.

After checking into our room in San Francisco Plaza, we reacquainted ourselves with familiar territory in Old Havana. We walked the city’s main shopping and entertainment street (Obitos Street), to the Central Square taxi stands (although the classic, perfectly reconditioned 1950s-era American cars that we remembered had been joined by more modern Checker cabs). We then stopped at one of our favorite spots, the patio of the Inglaterra Hotel, where we listened to a classic Cuban band over a couple mojitos. A great first night in a beautiful city.

Our tour began on the next day. This blog is a quick overview of some of Havana’s main attractions. We will cover many of these areas in more depth in upcoming blogs.

Havana’s Headlight (via a vintage 1956 Chevy)

Our guide Adrian met us the next morning for a day-long city tour. After a brief review of the highlights of San Francisco Plaza on which our hotel was located, we boarded one of city’s famous perfectly restored historic American cars. Our ride for the day was “Lola”, a pristine pink 1956 Chevy BelAir that NostalgiaCar restored with a Toyota engine and drive train and parts from wherever they can get them. (Due to the American trade embargo, Cuba can’t get American parts, even if they are still available.) The company typically buys its cars from older Cubans and restore them in its garage. And to ensure they remain pristine, each car is driven only by a single driver who is responsible for taking care of it.

Since we had seen all of the city’s highlights on our previous trip, we limited our windshield tour to a handful of areas we had not seen before. These included:

• New Havana, the home of most of the city’s (and the country’s) high-rise apartments and office towers and the American Embassy (that was upgraded from an “Interest Section” in 2016).

• Miramar and Playa Neighborhoods. Miramar is a section of town that reminds one of Palm Beach. This area, especially along the main thoroughfare of 5^th Avenue, contains many luxurious homes that wealthy Americans built in the 1940s and 50s—homes that were, of course, confiscated after the revolution. While many of the largest of these homes have been converted into Embassies, most of the others are owned by well-to-do Cuban families who typically house multiple generations in the same house. Most of the even more grand mansions of the next-door Playa district, meanwhile, are used as Ambassadorial residences—other, that is, than the huge, forested estate that is the home to Raoul Castro.

• Vedado. This once-exclusive section of the city once housed many of the city’s rich and famous, served as vacation-central for rich guests and now serves as the seat of the country’s government (especially around Revolution Plaza). And to demonstrate how dedicated many of Vedado’s resident’s loved the neighborhood, many chose to build their eternal mansions (in the form of lovely mausoleums) in the neighborhood’s Colon Cemetery. These and other sections of the neighborhood are discussed in our forthcoming post on Vedado.

• Central Park. From there we drove to Central Havana, past the historic Capitol building and Central Park, with its incredible Neo-Claasical/Deco-style Grand Theater and the historic Hotel Inglaterra, which fronts on Central Park—a place that was one of our favorite haunts on our previous trip, and would resume that position this trip. We were, in fact, to claim what would virtually become a perpetual seat on the hotel’s patio, where we would continually return for a rejuvenating elixir of Cuban music and Mojitos.

• Cathedral Square, which is surrounded by the 270 year-old San Cristobal Cathedral, the San Carlos and Ambrosio Seminary and 18^th and 19^th-century mansions, had been owned by two Marqueses (of Arcos and of Aquas Claras, respectively). We then had lunch at the greatly restored Marqueses de Arcos Palace.

• Partagas Cigar Factory. We made a brief stop that Tom mandated at the Partagas cigar factory (which produced not only Partagas, but also Cohiba (his favorites), Montecristo, Romeo y Julieta and more than a dozen other brands.

• East Havana and the Malecon. Our next stop was in East Havana, where Havana’s own 20-meter tall Christo statue that was created by a Cuban sculptor.

The same park also houses:

• Che Guevara’s post-Revolution headquarters;

• Civil Defense headquarters (which manages the country’s responses to hurricanes and other natural disasters) and its lovely, naturalistic sculpture symbolizing the lending of a helping hand to people in need: and most interesting of all;

• An exhibit of Cold War mementos including missiles, anti-aircraft guns, a Mig 21 fighter jet and the ruins of an American spy plane that was shot down over Cuba.

• Moro Castle. Nearby, in East Havana, is the 1589 Moro Castle, which was the primary fortress for guarding the Harbor and the City from marauding pirates, the home of the harbor’s primary lighthouse and of the canon which is still fired every day at sunset, a tradition that dates from the 16^th century when it was used to warn citizens that the city’s gates were about to close for the evening.

• Malecon. Back across Havana Bay, we returned to the Malecon, the 7 km seafront promenade along which a number of Havana’s interesting buildings lie and on which people stroll, teens meet with friend and young lovers spend evening making out.
• Habana Vieja, or Old Havana. After all this time in the car, it was time to bid ado to our friend Lola and her steward/driver. We then visited two former harbor-side warehouses, one that houses one of Cuba’s few microbreweries and another next door that is home to hundreds of arts and crafts stalls. We skipped the area’s tourist highlight—Havana Club’s Rum Museum (which we experienced on our previous trip) in favor getting back into Old Havana itself, for an abbreviated, but interesting tour that we would supplement with our own tours upon our return to the city from our week+-long tour of the rest of the island.

While the day provided a great refresher for complement to our previous tour, one can only take so much learning in a single day. It was time for a pre-dinner drink at one of Obispo Street’s outdoor jazz bars and Tom’s first cigar (one of the Cohibas that he bought earlier that day).

OK, so much for an overview. Our next blogs drill down into some of the more fascinating areas we visited in Havana.