Final Thoughts on Cuba

In no particular order:   What an odd country where health care is free but you can’t buy an aspirin. The best restaurants are private (paladares) which compete with state owned restaurants.  Guess where all the gringos go.  The state fights back though.  They make the tour buses dump the tourists out at least four blocks from the private restaurants.. Artists are the elite of the country, but they mostly sell out of there home and you pay by wire transfer to another country. Their national ballet company is as good as any in the world, but their ballet theatre had restrooms with urinals torn out of the walls and no toilet paper. There’s an eight lane highway...

Fidel, the Embargo and More

In Cuba, every one calls him Fidel as if they not only know him, but have a personal relationship with him.  In a way, they do.  He has cast a long shadow over the island and those who live there or lived there at one time.  He has, directly or indirectly controlled almost every aspect of their lives.  Those who live in Cuba today depend on Fidel and his regime for their livelihood, their well being and even their sense of self worth.  Those who are Cuban, but have left Cuba are, for the most part sustained by their hatred of him and a desire for revenge that transcends reason. Fidel was born to the middle class in Cuba, but he, of course, rejected class in...

A Succinct History of Cuba

The thing about history is that no one really knows what happened because you weren’t there to see it with their own eyes.  Yes, I know, there are those strange folks (called historians) who study the evidence and write what they think happened.  I’m certainly no historian, but that’s what I’m going to do for the next several paragraphs, give you my version of what happened in Cuba.  You can believe it or not. In the beginning there were the indigenous peoples that for some reason we now call Arawaks.  I’ve got no idea where they came from or how they got there.  In any case, they lived here and multiplied presumably eating such as there was to be found in...

Guarding the Throne

I started to entitle this posting, Bathrooms I Have Known, but that is more explicit than I intend, also it was the projected title of a book of my good friend, Ted R., who traveled the world as I did, and had suffered the use of foreign facilities in more remote locations that I.   Unfortunately, Ted is no longer with us, but I’m sure he would have appreciated my efforts. As I’ve traveled around both the civilized and not so civilized world for the last forty years or so, I have seem them all.  Bathrooms, johns, WC’s, toilettes, banos, toiletten, crappers, comfort facilities, or whatever they may be called in your part of the world and in your vernacular....

There Must Be Another Reason to Come Here

And it isn’t food.  I’ve now had three major meals in Havana, not including breakfasts, which is, I realize, a small sample.  I’m never one to shy away from making premature judgments about anything, least of all, food.  I’m ready to judge.  I’m pretty sure they have no idea how to cook in Cuba.  Maybe it’s the commies, perhaps it’s  the years the rooskies were here, but either they never knew how to cook, or, if they did,  they’ve forgotten. Granted, we’ve been eating at all the high end places, such as they are.  These are the ones that get great ratings in TripAdvisor were people try to prove how smart they are about hotels and restaurants.  The odd...