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HAVANA - DAY 2 Sunday, December 2. We had not signed up for any excursions for today, preferring to explore on our own. We got through the immigration maze about 11:15. We had seem some horse-drawn carriages on the street yesterday and hoped to hire one to show us around. Sure enough! One came by minutes after we came out, and we hired him for an hour. He took us first along the Malecon to the Cathedral (La Catedral de la Virgen Maria de la Concepcion Inmaculada de La Habana). This was also a stop on our cancelled tour, Old Colonial Havana, and at least a dozen tour buses were parked along the Malecon where we turned into Cathedral Square. We alighted and our driver (Richie) escorted us around the area. Although he spoke no English, his Italian was excellent (better than ours after so many years), so we had no trouble understanding him.
Next he took us on a clockwise loop of Havana Vieja, largely duplicating the canceled bus tour.
Although most of the old city walls had been demolished, we passed remnants of varying size
that had been preserved. Just after noon, we stopped and visited Dos Hermanos Bar for a few
minutes. Then we rode through Central Park and other plazas that we had seen on our bus tour
the day before.
We went by the Museum of the Revolution, housed in what was once the Presidential Palace. We stopped to take pictures at the Granma Memorial at he back of the main museum. The Memorial is a large glass enclosure which houses the Granma, the yacht that took Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and his brother Raúl Castro along with dozens of other revolutionaries from Mexico to Cuba in November 1956 to begin their revolution. It was a shaky start, but in just over two years they ousted Batista.
Also around the Granma, an SA-2 surface-to-air missile of the type that shot down a U.S. U-2 spy plane during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as the engine of the U-2 and various vehicles and tanks used in the revolution, were on display. Our ride also took us by Plaza Vieja (1559), the Railroad Station, and Our Lady of Kazan Russian Orthodox Church (2001). We even saw a Bavarian-style wall mural.
We had passed the Almacenes San Jose Artisans' Market the day
and also earlier in our ride with Richie, and we wanted to see it. So we ask
him to drop us off there at the end of our ride. It was almost 1:00 p.m.,
so our ride had taken almost 90 minutes. We paid him accordingly. The indoor market consisted of row upon row of small stands, many selling basically the same
tourist goods on the ground floor and paintings upstairs. Jane wanted a small leather purse to use on the trip, and we bought one at the first
stand we came to. The Market is near the old Train Station and there was a
permanent exhibit of old trains out front. We walked back to the ship, about half a mile. By then it was very hot, with little shade. Jane was exhausted by the time we got back, but we still took the time to explore Plaza de San Francisco de Asis, just across the street from Immigration. The entire block before we reached the Plaza was occupied by the San Francisco Convent (1716, replacing one built in 1591). The monks were long gone, though, and the convent is now a museum of sascres art. The Minor Basillica of St. Francis still stands in the Plaza. It was begun in 1535, but the present building dates from 1716. It has not been used as a church since 1763 when Cuba was returned to Spain after the the British occuation. The Church is now used as a concert hall.
It was after 2:00 by the time we got back to our room. Again, we had the buffet lunch. We spent most of the afternoon resting. The ship sailed at 7:00. We had dinner in the main dining room at 7:30, sharing a table with Sandy Cares, the "Enrichment" lecturer who made a presentation almost every day. | |||||||||||||||
