Then down Av de los Presidentes (Avenue of the Presidents) passing the large elegant mansions where some of some of Cuba's former presidents as well as other important historical figures lived.

Statues of illustrious Latin American leaders line the Las Ramblas–style Calle G (officially known as Av de los Presidentes), including Salvador Allende (Chile), Benito Juárez (Mexico) and Simón Bolívar. At the top of the avenue is a huge marble Monumento a José Miguel Gómez , Cuba's second president. At the other end, the monument to his predecessor – Cuba's first president – Tomás Estrada Palma (long considered a US puppet) has been toppled, with just his shoes remaining on the original plinth.

Guarding the entrance to Calle G (G Street), on the Malecón is the equestrian Monumento a Calixto García, paying homage to the valiant Cuban general who was prevented by US military leaders in Santiago de Cuba from attending the Spanish surrender in 1898. Twenty-four bronze plaques around the statue provide a history of García's 30-year struggle for Cuban independence.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/cuba/havana/sights/neighbourhoods-villages/av-de-los-presidentes#ixzz3x0mitpq0

A drive along part of the 8 km Malecon with the waves breaking over the sea wall. No wonder hardly anyone was out there.

The Malecón, Havana's evocative 8km-long sea drive, is one of the city's most soulful and quintessentially Cuban thoroughfares. Long a favored meeting place for assorted lovers, philosophers, poets, traveling minstrels, fisherfolk and wistful Florida-gazers, the Malecón's atmosphere is most potent at sunset when the weak yellow light from creamy Vedado filters like a dim torch onto the buildings of Centro Habana, lending their dilapidated facades a distinctly ethereal quality.

Laid out in the early 1900s as a salubrious ocean-side boulevard for Havana's pleasure-seeking middle classes, the Malecón expanded rapidly eastward in the century's first decade with a mishmash of eclectic architecture that mixed sturdy neoclassicism with whimsical art nouveau. By the 1920s the road had reached the outer limits of burgeoning Vedado, and by the early 1950s it had metamorphosed into a busy six-lane highway that carried streams of wave-dodging Buicks and Chevrolets from the gray hulk of the Castillo de San Salvador de la Punta to the borders of Miramar. Today the Malecón remains Havana's most authentic open-air theater, a real-life 'cabaret of the poor' where the whole city comes to meet, greet, date and debate.

Fighting an ongoing battle with the corrosive effects of the ocean, many of the thoroughfare's magnificent buildings now face decrepitude, demolition or irrevocable damage. To combat the problem, 14 blocks of the Malecón have been given special status by the City Historian's Office in an attempt to stop the rot.

The Malecón is particularly evocative when a cold front blows in and massive waves crash thunderously over the sea wall. The road is often closed to cars at these times, meaning you can walk right down the middle of the empty thoroughfare and get very wet.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/cuba/havana/sights/neighbourhoods-villages/malecon#ixzz3x0nY5lHS

 
  











 




 







 




































 
Past the newly opened US Embassy before seeing the Maimi's Breakers Hotel lookalike Hotel Nacional with a couple of classic American convertibles cars pulling out of the driveway.

Passing the Revolution Museum with a mental note to visit this later on.