Cuba!

Yesterday morning we woke up in the port of Havana. After breakfast Travalon and I set out to find the beautiful white and gold church we had seen from the ship, but we went the wrong direction and ended up first at the Basilica of San Francisco, and then at the Cathedral, where I - huge shock! - bought a rosary. We had lobster paella in a courtyard with peacocks and cats for company, and a trio of musicians strolled in and serenaded us. I thought, oh man, they are going to want money, but they were so good that I ended up tipping them and buying their CD. We took a bus tour of Havana, stopping at the Christopher Columbus Cemetery (so named because he was supposed to be buried there, but actually nobody knows where his body ended up), and at an old fort where we bought the Holy Trinity of Cuba: cigars, coffee, and rum. Our last stop on the tour was a statue of Jesus made of Italian marble, commissioned by Battista's wife in thanksgiving for his surviving an assassination attempt. In the evening we took another bus through the surprisingly dark roads of Havana to the famous Riviera Hotel, where we attended a performance of the "Legends of Cuban Music," some of the surviving members of the Buena Vista Social Club and the Afro-Cuban All Stars. Man, were they fantastic! During one part of the show, they asked audience members what countries we were from, and for every country they did a little snippet of a song. I said I should have said I was Columbian to see what they did, but Travalon pointed out that I should have said I was from Ireland, which would make much more sense. One old singer looked a lot like my maternal grandfather. He always kind of seemed like a cool cat, like he was an old jazz musician, but I never would have guessed salsa singer! By the end they had us up and dancing onstage too.

Here are some photos. First are examples of the beautiful pastel buildings in Havana.

Travalon made some new friends! We also made friends with some kind of lizard and about a gazillion cats, but the internet is slow here so I am not posting all our pictures yet.

Their Capitol building looks surprisingly like ours in Madison!

Most of what you have heard about Cuba is true, like that there are lots of candy-colored classic cars on the road.

Check out my new replacement for Famous Hat.

All the photos I took at the cemetery and the fort were on my "real" camera, not my cellphone, so I will have to upload them later. From the giant Jesus statue we had a fantastic view of our cruise ship, the Norwegian Sky:

And here is the statue. Some people say he looks like he is holding a mojito in his left hand and a Cuban cigar in his right one.

There are random things in Havana as well, like the white and gold church that we finally found. It is a Russian Orthodox church, which is sort of bizarre if you think about it, because the Russians were supposedly in Cuba to teach them how to be Godless atheists. But there it is, nonetheless.

Today we had a day at sea, listening to a Beatles cover band, a reggae band, and a Brazilian group. I wanted to do a painting of a palm tree, but apparently you had to sign up ahead of time, which a bunch of us didn't know since it wasn't in the onboard daily flyer. So then instead Travalon and I did a really weird geographical trivia game, where they showed you photos of famous cities, only most of them had no well-known landmarks in the scene so it was hard to guess where they were. We still got almost half of them right somehow, but another team beat us. Oh well, didn't need that key chain anyway.

Here are my two new narwhals, Bjorn and Erik.

Our housekeeper put all the stuffed animals together on top of the couch:

When I asked why he hadn't made us a towel animal yet, he said they don't do that anymore unless you request it, but since I asked, he made us this adorable elephant:

I still have tons of photos of Cuba, and Travalon has even more, so watch this space for future posts.

Famous Hat