Old Havana Part 2

I enjoy my time in the outdoor cafe facing the Cathedral St Christopher. The is pure theater going on around me with people dancing, playing music, telling fortunes and selling various whatever. After the church, I am starting to get tired.....

I leave the Cathedral, fight off being tired and decide to look for the famous Hemingway bar El Floridita. I take a small busy street known as Obispo which while crowded and busy offers shopping, various restaurants, cafes and street food to make walking it an all day affair. My mission is to reach the end about a ten-twelve block walk to the bar. The street opens up to a park filled plaza and I see the large sign El Floridita with Hemingway's signature sign next to it. I snap a few photos for you people (and me) who read the blog and reach for the door....
I walk in the place and practically run into the band with this sexy female singer/dancer in a small area off the bar. The rest of the place is packed. Tourists with guidebooks on the bar, pretty college women, couples and guys like me all clamoring for a piece of history. A large bronze statute of Hemingway stands at the end of the bar. The bar stool next to the stature is left empty for everyone and everyone does want a photo next to Papa. The rest of the bar is adorned with B & W photos of Hemingway in Cuba and quite a few with Castro. I see the photo I gave Jack of Fidel congratulating Hemingway for having won the Cuba fishing competition. The impossibly crowded long bar is two and three deep with people trying to get a daiquiri. The daiquiri is the drink Hemingway made famous here. Of course, I order one. I have to admit the one made for me at the Hotel Nacional was much better. The hotel Nacional has the best daiquiris and piña coladas I ever tasted. The bar is so crowed when I attempts to put my drink down on the bar that it spills. No problem, the bartender gives me another on the house. The area behind me and all along the wall and back room are filled to the brim with tables of people drinking and eating. The music is really jamming and this makes dealing with the crowds and tourist drinks easier to handle. I hang out about an hour then leave to walk around the park area which has a few nice hotels I checkout for possibly future reference.

Around the block from the Park Central Hotel I seek out the Bacardi building. This art deco masterpiece was build in the 20's and was taken from the family when Castro took over and made all businesses and private property the property of the state. Boy, that must have suck. I walk into the lovely marble and brass lobby to search out the mezzanine bar. I have read so much about what a wonderful, elegant, quiet oasis this bar is from the maddening crowds of old Havana. Yes, the bar is small, tucked away, wonderful woodwork, but far from what you would believe is a quiet, elegant peaceful bar. The crowd in there was loud and since they smoke in Cuba everywhere, or most everywhere, it was smelly. I think men go to Cuba to smoke cigars with impunity and to play big shot. Twirling their cigars, creating a atomic mushroom cloud of smoke, while the rest of us get sick, have to dry clean our clothes, in need of a shower and smell like somebody's grandfather, they sit in their own world. Even the Hotel Nacional is a haven for their madness. Needles to say, I leave this mess and grab a cab back to the hotel. I am tired but hungry.

I stopped in one of the restaurants for a quick rice and beans plate which while not incredible was filing and good. Time to get to the room for a snooze. Lo and behold all the elevators are not running. I walk up to the fifth floor only to find out you can only exit not enter the various floors. I head back downstairs to sit in the lobby until their is power again. At last after fifteen minutes power is restored and I make my way to my room....