Day 1 -- Travel

JAX to Charlotte was easy. We were lucky and there were seats available on an earlier flight to Cancun. With our booked flight much later we would not have made our connection to Havana in Cancun. The Cancun airport is very big and modern. We were told our Cubana flight was in terminal 2. It is a 25 minute walk. There is a free shuttle but it runs every 40 minutes. We opted for a personal ride. Terminal 2 was glorious. Lots of upscale shops there are tons of little restaurants and almost every one of them has live music and tons of Americans. Other than Mexican souvenir shops, it felts like being in the US. We had to purchase Cuban visas, but it was pretty quick and easy. A friendly Cuban guy even gave us a wifi code to a secure wifi of one of the restaurants (no public wifi at this glorious airport). At checkin we had to pay an airport tax. Cubana airlines to Havana was short (1 hr) and nice. Bo breezed through immigration but not Al. He had to stand in line to buy health insurance, and on the other side Bo was wondering if he got detained or arrested or deported. We took a taxi to the hotel (Iberostar Parque Central). The taxi was a 50’s Chevy with manual shift lever on steering column. We are finally here but $200 of our cash depleted. AND nobody in the city takes US credit or debit cards. We walked through the center of Old Havana in the evening. Along the main street (Calle Obispo) there are tons of little restaurants and each of them has live music so the whole street is full of sounds. Unfortunately it is also full of holes because they are starting to install water, gas and electricity in the houses in Old Havana so streets are torn up. We ate in a restaurant called Europa with great music but mediocre (but cheap) food. It reminded Bo of communist times in Poland because whatever we wanted to order from the menu was not available so we had to eat what they had whether we want it or not.