Exploring the City of Havana in Cuba as a Tourist Visitor
Intro to Havana
The capital of Cuba, Havana, is the country’s heart and soul and every morning the streets of this city filled with people.
This is unsurprising when you consider that over 20% of the population of this country live here in the capital.
That is over two million people living in the main city. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and in fact also the largest in the whole of the Caribbean.
After four hundred years of history which is a mix of tragedy and triumph, this is still a country which is full of people who love to live and which shines through the music and dance you get to see on a widespread basis, in a city such as Havana.
Havana and the Past
Havana though was not always the bustling city that it now is because, for two hundred years, it was a sleepy small town that would only come alive once a year and that was when the Spanish treasure fleet would dock.
In 1555, three years after it became Cuba’s capital, Havana was seized by pirates.
Work on El Morro Bastian and the Castillo de la Real, the forts overlooking the main bay, started almost immediately after the pirates’ invasion.
El Malecón and La Plaza de Armas
El Malecón, Havana’s waterfront area is a popular meeting place and is a nice place to enjoy the sea breeze as an escape from the tropical heat.
One of the liveliest places to visit is el Paseo de Martí, the main boulevard and which is named after the famous poet, José Martí.
Still called by its old name, El Praddo, this is always one of the busiest streets.
La Plaza de Armas, Havana’s old city square, is a reminder of the days when the military garrison matched that of the population.
Lining the plaza are some of the city’s most important historical buildings. El Palazzo de Capitales Henerala was built in 1776, after a British occupation that followed a long siege.
Foreign trade had been prohibited by Spain and the British ended the ban, opening North American markets to Cuban products.
After independence in 1898, the governor’s palace became Havana’s city hall and was later then turned into a museum.
On the east part of the bay, the biggest fortress can be found and this gives you one of the best views of the city.
La Plaza de la Catedral is another popular part of the city and is home to the weekly Saturday market.
The church square continues to this day to be an area of social interaction, a little like Piazza Navona in Rome, for those of you who have also been to Italy.
Havana’s baroque cathedral, which also dates from the 1700s, having been consecrated in 1789, the year of the French revolution.
It once contained the remains of Columbus, until his remains were later moved to Spain, after Cuban independence.
The Americans and Havana
The Grand Teatro is one of the city’s main live music and events venues and is home to one of the world’s top ballet troupes, with shows often taking place in the Tropicana venue.
In addition to dance, Cuban music is also very popular, has become popular worldwide after World War One, at a time when Cuba became very popular with Americans who would visit for the nightlife, given that prohibition existed in America at the time.
Hotels, casinos and bars developed at a fast pace at that time, in order to satisfy the demand of visiting Americans. U.S. gangsters, politicians, actors and sports stars were among those that would travel to Havana to enjoy relaxing and mixing in this highly vibrant city.
The Tropicana review is a show which still runs in the venue of the same name, and is a show I highly recommend to get a cultural look at the dance and music of the past.
La Floridata restaurant and bar, once the favourite drinking place of Ernest Hemingway and where he would enjoy his favourite drink, a rum daiquiri.
Hemingway’s old house has been kept just as it was when he used to sit there writing many years ago, and is an attraction worth making the trip to the suburbs of the city to view.
Many tours include his old house which is classified as a museum.
How to See Havana as a Tourist
One of the very best ways to see Havana is just to walk around and explore. Allow yourself to get lost i.e. explore the side streets and areas which are off the main tourist streets.
One of my favourite ways to see the city is to hire a local taxi driver for the day (I hired one for three days).
You can greatly benefit from your taxi drivers’ knowledge of the city to explore not just those areas popular with tourists, but to also see those other often missed places which create great photo opportunities and a wonderful chance to meet the locals.
Havana is like a time-warp and the idea of it being a living museum is not so far fetched when you walk around.
The most interesting aspects of this city for me are the people, the streets, the music, the dance i.e. all of those things you can appreciate from hanging out in the small bars and restaurants around this city.
Many of you will be tempted to fly into Cuba and head straight to resort locations such as Cayo Santa Maria, Varadero and so on.
My advice though is to consider spending a whole one or two weeks only in Havana.
There is really so much to do here with many museums to explore and so many places with great live music and so much to see and do.
