This was our fourth day in Havana, Rosie and The Operator had the lay of the land in our neighborhood and were totally enjoying just wandering the quiet back streets. A group of kids ran past us in the street, laughing and yelling, kicking a ball and sidestepping the pedestrians who just wandered down the middle of the road like us.
The Operator elbowed Rosie, ‘Look at the ball’, he said. The ‘ball’ was a tightly wadded soccer ball size of newspaper, wrapped with packing tape to keep it together.
We passed another group of kids one day who had drawn a circle in the unpaved area of the street, they had painted a stone bright yellow and this was sitting in the middle of the circle. The kids were standing about 10 metres away from the circle and were throwing their own stones at the yellow one. We guess they were scoring off hitting the yellow stone and keeping their stones inside the circle. All were happy, laughing and chatting away, plus respectfully moving out of the street for pedestrians as they passed.
We were wandering to the Museum of The Revolution in the Old Town, walking slowly and keeping out of the sun we waited in the portico of this beautiful building for it to open. Limited opening times and only on certain days, we were hoping it actually was going to open…no one here seems that fussed about working, opening or being on time in Cuba.
The museum is held in what used to be the former Grand Presidential Palace where all of the Cuban presidents lived from its opening date in 1920 until the start of the Revolution in 1959.
The palace itself is beautiful in its simple austerity, it is currently being, (you guessed it), renovated, with some of the rooms off limits. Tiffanys of New York did the interior design here thank you very much and it is reflected in the beautiful chandeliers and finishing touches.
The exhibits inside mainly chronicle the period of the Revolutionary War of the 1950s, totally one sided, totally biased and very muchly skewed to the Cuban perspective if you were to take any notice of the mumbling Americans trotting around. No Photos! Revolutionaries do not say please.
The museum is laid out room by room in an almost religious reverence. The way the guns of Guevara and Castro are displayed side by side and then the bloody uniforms riddled with bullet holes and smatterings of revolutionary blood is something else alright.
Follow the information boards and chronicle the Revolution timelines which were full of photographs of jungle hide outs and handsomely scruffy men in camo fatigues living in caves. Lets face i t,who is not enamored by Che Guevara’s grungy good looks, what an idealist dream boat! The narrative seemed so informative and interesting…if you could read Spanish…another fail for tourism in Havana.
Never mind Rosie had her trusty Lonely Planet which gave us a blow by blow of the palace interior itself and the histories held within it.
Behind the building lies the Granma Memorial, armed guards patrol this glass encased memorial. The only way in is through the palace after you have bought an entry ticket, the back end is on display just off the Prado, tourists peer through the tall, scratched perspex at the garden that lies within and wonder at the greatest propaganda collection of revolutionary souvenirs in Cuba.
In pride of place is the Granma itself…the boat that carried the Castro brothers, Guevara and their band of merry revolutionaries from Mexico to Cuba to start the revolution! This modest boat is totally enshrined in a glass case (inside the building above) for prosperity.
Surface to air missiles are displayed, the type that shot down pesky American spy planes, plus, the engine of the said defeated and destroyed American spy plane is proudly displayed in all its twisted glory. Viva la Revolution!
They also show the tractor that was converted into a tank by rural guerillas, the bullet strewn Buick with the false floor for transporting top secret documents, plus the bullet riddled delivery van which innocuously drove up to the Palace in 1957 loaded with guerillas in an attempt to assassinate President Batista.
Rosie wandered onto the lush grass to take a better wide angled picture of the bizarre surroundings and was promptly ushered off said grass by a machine gun toting guard.
This star shape monument is a memorial to the Heroes of The Fatherland who gave their life in the Revolution. It has an eternal flame and an armed guard near it at all times.
In the back yard, past the bullet strewn wall bearing the scars of revolutionary freedom fighting is a wall depicting the heroes and villains of the ‘ongoing’ Revolution. The Rincon de los Cretinos is the Corner of the Cretins. Featuring former Presidante Batista, Ronald Regan, George HW Bush and George W Bush. The Americans were mumbling again about this too ….quite amusing.
That was a heavy afternoon, time to find a place for dinner and have a few rums. Back in our neighborhood we stumbled upon a street we hadn’t been down before. We walked past a door way and did a double take, standing in the doorway was a perfectly dressed European style waiter. Black pants, gleaming white shirt, black waistcoat and bowtie. A cardboard, handwritten sign written in English was behind him declaring $1.50 mojitos and $2 pizzas, buy 2 drinks and get 1 hour free internet. FREE INTERNET!!!
Rosie had not been online since they had landed in Cuba, the government controls the internet and you have to buy internet access on wee cards and then go to a sanctioned hotspot zone, insert your card number and details and you have internet time for the length you have bought on your card. We hadnt bothered buying any access and were going to do it in the smaller towns. The Operator however was more interested in the $1.50 mojitos and a pizza.
There was no restaurant to be seen in what looked like a normal dilapidated multistory building , just the door, the waiter and the handwritten sign, the waiter was smiling and waving us over, so through the entrance we went and descended into the basement. To emerge into the twilight zone, the restaurant was huge, with heaps of tables. Spotlessley clean, with the decor a gleaming white, the lighting was dimmed and a guy in a tux was sitting playing a baby grand piano, while a disco ball sent slivers of light dancing around the room.
We were ushered to a table, the waitress spoke English! Within minutes, Rosie was surfing the world wide web and The Operator was onto his second mojito with the most perfect thin crust Italian pizza being presented to us. Mama Mia, what a find! After a couple of pizzas, many rum based beverages and a complementary new hour of internet access, the cavern was filling up and the piano player was really good!
Rosie and The Operator wished we had found this place a little earlier in our stay rather than on our last night in town. Feeling very happy and a little staggery we farewelled our new found friends in the restaurant and took leave to have a final farewell to Havana tipple at Floriditas Bar on the way home, plus, Rosie had some wheeling and dealing to do, which she probably shouldn’t have done with a skinful.
