Author: Consuelo Hermer

Publisher: Hermer Press

Published: 2008-11

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1443730734

A GUIDE TO CUBA AND THE CUBANS by CONSUELO HERMER AND MARJORIE MAY. Contents include: FOREWORD XI CHAPTER i One, If by Land ... 3 Getting to Havana; expenses involved. Going through Customs. Hotels, pensions, furnished apartments, fur nished houses. Intelligence service, CHAPTER n Three Bags Full 33 A Cuban clothes guide for men and women. CHAPTER ni So Near andYet So Foreign 46 What to see and what to do in Havana. Holiday time in Cuba. Routine points of in terest. CHAPTER iv The Pause for Refreshment 1 04 Eating your way through Havana. Cuban specialties and where to find them. Rec ommended restaurants. Viii CONTENTS CHAPTER v Dawn s Early Light 132 Night life in Havana. Music and dancing. Bars and night clubs. Recommended places. CHAPTER vi To Market, to Market 159 Shopping in Havana. What to bring back. Recom mended stores. CHAPTER vn Country Cousins 188 Fifteen trips into the in terior of the Island. CHAPTER viii What Makes the Wheels Go Round 224 Taking apart the Cubans to see how they tick, CHAPTER ix How to Win Friends Ha vana Style 245 Do's and DonYs for a pleas ant visit. APPENDIX 260 GLOSSARY 271 TRAVEL RATES 280 INDEX 283 ILLUSTRATIONS Aerial View of Havana, Showing the Capitol 20 The Cuban Capitol, Havana 21 The Prado, and the Sevilla-Biltmore Hotel 36 Shrine Commemorating the First Mass Held in the Western World 37 Children's Hospital in Havana 37 The Gomez Monument on Malecon 68 Remnant of Original Wall Which Sur rounded Havana 69 Colon Catedral, Havana 84 A Cross-Eyed Angel Leads a Procession During Holy Week 85 Main Entrance to the University of Havana 85 Eighteenth-Century Patio, Now the En trance to a Bar 116 Lottery Ticket Peddler 117 An Open-Air Market in the Residential Section of Havana 132 La Fuerza, Fortress Built hy De Soto 133 ILLUSTRATIONS An Air View of Mono Castle, Havana Harbor 1 64 Primitive Transport of Sugar Cane 165 Barrels of Rum 165 A Pineapple Field 1 80 A Seventeenth-Century Patio 181 Itinerant Coffee Vendors 2 1 2 A Balanced Diet for Cubans 213 The Gamblers Paradise and Purgatory 228 The Wheel of Fortune at Oriental Park 228 The Conga on the Streets During Carnival Time 229 Cuban Torch-Bearers in the Comyarsas 229 Cuban Troubadours 244 Night-Club Rumba Dancer 244 A Geological Curiosity in the Vinales Valley 245 Tobacco Experimental Station, San Juan y Martinez 245 Street Scene, Santiago de Cuba 260 Typical Street of a Cuban Provincial Town 261 Cadet on Guard at the Naval Academy, Mariel 261. FOREWORD: MOST TRAVEL BOOKS take you far, but usually not far enough. Too often they include too much historical material, too little about the facts of life. Knowledge of any city, after all, is written in terms of its people, its food, its customs. Take Havana, now. There have been no books about Havana that make its people real to us. If Americans consider the Cubans touched, they, in their turn, sum us up as Americanos locos. But the Cubans, at least, admire the stuff Americans are made of, even though it defies their analysis. It's time for visitors to return the compliment, to be more open-minded and less jingoistic. The geniality and gracious dig nity of life in Havana and the mercurial charm of its inhabitants deserve understanding and appreciation. There have been no books about Havana that guide tourists through the complicated maze of Cuban etiquette.