Wednesday, November 5, 2014 The third in a series of seven entries; all delayed by one week.
I am awake at 6:15 while BR snoozes. The Wi-Fi delivers a quick look at the website for The Kansas City Star and I see that the Republicans have won virtually every contested office in yesterday's elections. Google is available and there is a rundown of news that appears to be exactly what I would see had I logged on at home.
I am unable to retrieve business email but I can get email at a personal address.
Coffee revives me while I read and I am soon ready to walk the Malecόn before breakfast. I have time for only four miles. This oceanfront drive is lined with broken sidewalks and crumbling buildings. Everywhere else in the world, this would be top dollar real estate, shiny and expensive. Here it is hovels or inhabitable ruins.
The ground floors of apartment buildings are boarded up; elsewhere they would house shops and bars. Without private enterprise and private ownership, nobody invests in these structures or creates a business to anchor them.
I have yet to see a pharmacy, food store, hardware store, upscale shops or t-shirt stores or nail salons or car dealerships or dry cleaners or ice cream shops or bakeries or butchers or green grocers. They must be somewhere but they are not where the visitors are because I have looked. I have seen one shoe store and one clothing boutique. The parks, such as they are, are well tended but empty of local people.
Today, we have a late breakfast on the hotel’s second floor and are just in time for a 9:20 lecture by Dr. Maritza Corrales. She speaks of Jewish history in Cuba and takes questions from our group. Later, we board the bus for a trip to the Cuban Fine Arts Museum. I am taken by a painting, "La Dama del Lago."
Then, it’s back to the old city. The rest of the tour group heads for the upscale Café Del Oriente while BR and I opt instead for a more downscale lunch of paella ($15 each) and share an $18 bottle of wonderful Chilean Frontera Conchay Toro Sauvignon Blanc at a less posh establishment a block away. At Café Paella,
our fellow diners dance while a trio serenades us. BR delights them and the wait staff by awarding them HDS company buttons which say in Spanish, “Soy Amada,” (“I Am Loved”). They love them—and her. BR has given these to our flight attendants and our fellow travelers along the way and received big smiles in return. For desert, we pause at the Museo Del Chocolate for—guess what. It is scrumptious.
As a side note, it is important to mention that at the banόs (toilets), toilet paper is not a standard feature. Instead, an attendant sits outside the door. As you enter, in exchange for 25 centavos (or more), she hands you two sheets of two ply tissue paper. Hopefully, that’s enough.
Next, the bus takes us to the synagogue, “Beth Shalom Patronato” for a visit with Adela Dworin who delights us with tales of Jews in Cuba. The Jewish Community Center’s role here is similar to what BR fondly recalls from the JCC at home. In the lobby of the synagogue is a photograph of Adela with Fidel Castro whom she has twice met. The government has had only good relations with Jews here; on that point, all agree.
Finally we head back to the Meliã Cohiba for two hours of relaxation before meeting in the hotel lobby for a 7:15 departure to dinner.
Again, I try to get business email. Researching my lack of success, I find this message from my friends at Google: Google restricts access to some of its enterprise services in certain countries, such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. If you try to sign in to these services from these countries, the following error appears: You appear to be signing in from a country where Google Apps accounts are not supported.
I assume that this is but one more feature of the embargo.
Our dinner is at another “Private Restaurant,” this one written up in the New York Times a few months back as being very good. Success must have spoiled it. The service was poor; bad enough that the owner came to our guide and returned the pre-paid gratuity saying that they didn’t deserve it. I’ll bet you never saw that happen before, did you? In addition, the food was a step below so-so. They didn’t offer to refund that part of the bill. I cannot recommend Salazar Dona Eutimia.
Private Restaurants? Well...
Wednesday, November 05, 2014
Havana, Cuba
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2025-02-11