Port of Call: Havana -- Plaza de Armas

Our last stop on our walking tour of Old Town Havana was the Plaza de Armas. It is the oldest plaza of Havana and dates back to around 1519 when Havana was first established. The name has to do with military arms and is where there were military parades, music concerts, and formal evening promenades.

The Plaza de Armas was the administrative and political center into the mid-twentieth century. The buildings surrounding the square are representative of four centuries but the one that caught my attention was the one with a great story behind it--or perhaps I should say in front of it.

The wooden street.

The Placio de los Capitanes Generales or Palace of the Captain Generals was a beautiful building that is not a museum. All of the streets around the plaza are cobble stone except for the stretch in front of the palace. As our guide told us, one of the generals (or governors) had a wife who complained that the noise of the horses and carriages kept her awake. In order to have peace in the family, he ordered that the cobble stone in front of the palace be replaced with wood.

This plaza had quite a nice park with trees and flowering bushes. In the center was a statue of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, the man who began the process of independence from Spain.




The other interesting building on the plaza is El Templete which almost looks like a Roman temple. It is on the site of the first mass ant the town council of Havana on November 16,1519. There is a ceiba tree in the courtyard that marks the place where the mass was held. Every year people gather near midnight of the 15th and as the new day arrives they circle the tree three times and make a wish for the future as a celebration of the anniversary.




A lady dressed in bright clothing was wandering through the tour groups and encouraging people to take pictures with her for a CUC ($1 USD). Our tour guide had told us about these ladies who wear very red lipstick so they can plant a bright red kiss on your cheek for the picture. It was obvious that the cruise industry is having an impact on their economy as the lady stopped our tour guide to ask when the next cruise ship was expected.



While some on our tour went off with the tour guide at the end of our tour to buy some scarves at a store that wasn't on our prohibited list, we told her thank you, gave her a tip, and made our way back to the ship which was a short walk along the Malecon, the sea wall that extends along the water's edge of the harbor for almost 5 miles.

The day was heating up or I may have been tempted to explore on our own a bit. Old Town Havana was fascinating.

Port of Call: Havana--Plaza de la Catedral

On our way to the Plaza de la Catedral from the Plaza Vieja we stopped in at the Hotel Ambos Mundos made famous by Ernest Hemingway. I was excited when our guide said that we were going in. We had passed on a Hemingway tour in favor of getting a more overall picture of Havana and I was envious of some of the reports from those who had taken the Hemingway tour.

The hotel was built in 1924 and Hemingway lived there for several years in the 1930s. His room was on the fifth floor from which he had views of the Havana harbor where he fished frequently on his boat, Pilar.





He rented the room for $1.50 a night and stayed until he moved his winter residence to a hillside just outside of Havana. He began his novel, For Whom The Bell Tolls, in room 511 which is set up as he would have had it and houses a small museum. Tours of the room/museum are available daily.

The hotel still books guests and as we entered the lobby there were some at the small bar and sitting in the comfortable sofas scattered around. What fascinated Bob and I immediately was the old elevator. It was one you see in old movies all the time--a cage in the middle of a taller cage of bars that stretched from one floor to another. I took one picture before I realized it was actually functional. When the elevator came down, I took another.

After examining the elevator, we moved to a small corner in the back of the lobby that had pictures of Hemingway and the man who was his fishing buddy, Gregorio Fuentes, who many think Santiago in the story, The Old Man And The Sea, was fashioned after. The hotel stop was a little bit of Hemingway and I enjoyed it.

One of the other interesting things we saw on the way to the Plaza de la Catedral was a gun museum. Guns are not allowed unless you are a collector and can pass the rigorous screening. Add Cuba to the growing list of countries who have strict gun control.




Along the way we also stopped for a few minutes to admire a huge mural that while it looks like a painting, it is actually an amazing mosaic made of small stones. It depicts 67 figures of art and history in Cuba. The small rocks were soaked in acrylic resin to get the 13 shades of the four basic colors in the mural. It is also a mirror image of the building across from it.


We wandered around a bit and went into the Cathedral to sit for a few minutes and enjoy the decor. Outside, from across the plaza, you can see that the two towers are different in size. When they were building the second tower, they realized they had to make it smaller because it was encroaching on the side street. Bells from the towers were out on the plaza in front of the cathedral as it was being renovated.

Port of Call: Havana -- Plaza Veija

Old Town Havana is made up of four plazas. After exploring the San Francisco Plaza, our walking tour took us to the Plaza Veija. This square seemed much larger than the first and perhaps a little newer although that could have been due to the restored buildings.

On one end of the plaza was of course a church. Our guide talked with us a bit about what is one of the main religions, Santeria. While the church is Catholic, it also accommodates those who worship a combination of Catholic saints and African deities.

Santeria focuses on building relationships between human beings and powerful but mortal spirits called orishas which are considered a manifestation of God. Those who follow believe that these spirits will give them help in life if they perform the appropriate rituals. The orishas will then enable them to achieve what God planned for them before they were born.

There is a Roman Catholic element in all this. Orishas are associated with Catholic saints. For example St Barbara/Shango, Our Lady of Charity/Ochun, Saint Lazarus/Babalu-Aye. Followers of Santeria are often in attendance at Roman Catholic services.

The rituals of Santeria that enable followers to stay in touch with the orishas involve drumming, dancing, speaking and eating with the spirits. Apparently the spirits "seize the head" of a follower allowing for the communication to be possible. There is also some animal sacrifice involved but it is mainly to prepare food for the orishas.

Members join as adults after receiving what they say is a call from an orisha. There is an initiation period for those who are called to be a priest or priestess in which they must go through four initiation rituals earning several items (like a beaded necklace) along the way and then wear white for a year while not having any physical contact with others not in the faith.

I have probably simplified the explanation of Sangeria too much but it all points to why we were told to avoid those who were wearing white and not take pictures as it would interfere with their initiation.

The Plaza Vieja was built actually to be a market place when the worshipers at San Francisco said that the market place in that plaza was so close to the church that there was too much noise. When the old Plaza Vieja was restored, they outlined the places where market booths were. You can see the squares marked off in the picture.

One of the more unusual statues we found was the rooster with a woman riding it carrying a huge fork. Our lecturer on the ship had said it was symbolic of wanting to feed the family but our tour guide (a female) said it was to illustrate how a woman rules the home.

Port of Call: Havana--Old Town

An early breakfast (7 AM is early when you're on a cruise) and we were soon on our way to meet our guide for our walking tour. We went through a similar process of showing passports and bags scanned but they seemed a little more laid back that morning. Our Enrichment Lecturer, Sandy Cares, had said that the women security personnel had an unusual uniform. She was right. They were in a tight and very short khaki skirt with either black fishnet or lacy patterned hose. Still, they pulled off a professional, all business, demeanor as they checked us through.

We met below the terminal again but this time we didn't board buses. I was so happy to not be on a bus. Now I could take pictures without worrying about the tinted window, reflections, and movement. Once we were all assembled, our guide introduced herself and we started out crossing the four lane boulevard in front of the terminal with the help of a traffic control person.

Right across from the cruise/ferry terminal is the Plaza de San Francisco. Of course every plaza was to have a church and this was named for the church that sat at one end. Our guide took time to caution us about the people we would encounter on our walk. There would be vendors and people who were dressed up wanting a CUC ($1 USD) for a picture of them. Others might be making sketches of us and then offering the sketches to us for payment. As she spoke, a man in a clown costume with a small dog sitting on top of his head approached us. She greeted him with a smile and said something in Spanish. He smiled back and moved away a bit. This would be repeated several times throughout our tour, twice when she embraced the vendors and apparently asked them to give us some room. I have never seen such kindness in a tour guide toward those who are trying to sell things to tour groups. Also, I've never seen people who are desperate to sell what they have to offer actually give space to the tour group. We never felt haggled or unsafe or bothered even when it was someone just begging which didn't happen nearly as much as I thought it might.

We wandered around the San Francisco plaza a bit and of course took a picture with "El Caballero de Paris" Jose Maria Lopez Liedin. There are all sorts of stories about him but the one that seems to emerge the most is that he was a dreamer who wandered the streets sharing dreams and stories with anyone who would listen. It is said that if you touch the beard, hand and shoe of the bronze statue your dreams will come true. They are obviously the shiniest parts of the bronze.

There were several dogs roaming around and sometimes coming up to us in a friendly approach. We noticed that a few had a collar with a white tag attached. Our guide explained that these were actually employed by the historical department. Sort of good-will ambassadors. People were asked to love them and feed them. She didn't explain what happened to the ones without a tag. A little research showed me that there is a movement underway in Havana to neuter strays and vaccinate them and encourage people to adopt them. Here's a link to the story I found.

The only traffic in the Old Town area consisted of a few trucks where there was some restoration work going on. The rest of the time it was all pedestrian and made for a comfortable walk as we moved on to the next plaza.