With a 9 a.m. departure time for our first walking/bus tour we were all up early for breakfast on the rooftop terrace. Setting out on time, we were forced to stop at the first bank we could find to exchange those pesky Mexican pesos into Cuban Convertible Pesos. FYI…a CUC just happens to be the equivalent of $1 USD! With almost everyone having to exchange money we were in line for quite some time…
Having accomplished this gargantuan task we boarded our bus and set up for a tour through Havana, stopping first at the Museo de Revolucion – former home of Fulgencio Batista. For more info on Batista, check the following link –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista
Here’s a short tour of the Museo from YouTube –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjFSWLrLvOQ
We continued by bus to Real Fortza Castle on the bay…visiting a cigar store which boasts the longest cigar ever made and listed in Guinness Book of Records…
The longest cigar measured 81.80 m (268 ft 4 in) and was made by Jose Castelar Cueto (Cuba) at the La Triada shop at Parque Morro-Cabaña in Havanna, Cuba, on 3 May 2011.
Cueto started to make the cigar on 25 April 2011, but only finished in the evening of 2 May. The cigar was officially measured on the following day.
By this time we were burned out after that long stop at the bank and headed to Plaza Catedral, which just happened to be located near the famous La Bodeguita del Medio….you know, the place where Hemingway drank mojitos!!!
Following lunch and some wonderful Cuban music, we began our walk back to our hotel…..very slowly! More about the various plazas in the next blog post…. anyone for another mojito?
Cuban Odyssey 