Havana Hotels

Our tour today was the ‘mobster’ hotels. It was primarily a tour of the public rooms of what used to be 5 star hotels but are now run by the government. The hotels' age are showing. We noticed as we went through the city, that what used to be the homes of the wealthy, are now apartment buildings. Some in good shape, but many appear drab and in disrepair. The average person makes on $40-60 per month, so they really can’t afford to upgrade their apartment. In general, there has been little new construction since the revolution and many of the building in the downtown area are empty and shuttered. 

We had lunch in a private restaurant. Only 10% of the businesses are private, and almost all of them require outside financing (usually overseas relatives) to get started. Of course, before the revolution, 40% of all business were foreign-owned.

Hotel Seville's Courtyard

The Hotel Seville was the largest and tallest hotel in 1934 with two casinos. It was owned by Battisti who also owned all the horse race tracks in Cuba. We also toured the former Havana Hilton and the Havana Libre, currently the tallest hotel in Cuba. There we tried a Cuba Libre, a rum and coke, which was created here during the Spanish American War, as well as learned how to make (and consume) a daiquiri. Our last stop was the National Hotel. Here they had a large exhibit in the bar of famous people who had visited the hotel

National Hotel's visitors

We ended with some trivia: the Cuban flag was designed in 1850 to be similar to the Texan flag, because they wanted to be independent just like Texas.

Our visit to Cuba was short, and while it was interesting, I'm not inclined to go back. Interesting to hear the story of the country from several perspectives, one focused on recent improvements, the other from how things are still pretty tough. If we were to go again, I'd prefer seeing more of the natural beauty of the country and less of the cities. For example, we know that their coral reefs are the best preserved in the Caribbean because when the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba lost their cheap source of fertilizer, so they had to become organic farmers before it was popular. The reefs have seen the benefit from the reduced use of fertilizers.