Day 4 -- Havana

Al’s birthday. We walked to Plaza San Francisco and walked up to the tower of the Saint Francisco church for great aerial views. Nice large plaza. We went into the stock exchange building and a friendly guard took us to the top and the scenic veranda around the building. We stopped at many galleries since there is an art bienniale in Havana. We stopped at a couple of tourist information places to inquire about visiting Hemingway’s house in the village of San Francisco de Paula. They said that there’s a travel agency in Hotel Sevilla that may offer a tour so we walked there to ask. Unfortunately, they need a minimum of 6 people to do it and the likelihood is minimal of this happening in the low season. Our best option is taking a cab. On the way back, we got Al’s Bday present, a nice Cuban shirt, There is a cigar factory near the hotel so we wanted to go there to buy some cigars, but it was closed. We were approached by a grungy-looking black guy to follow him into a cigar cooperative, but when we saw the building he wanted us to enter, we got out of the areas as quickly as we could. For dinner we walked to the hotel Sevilla’s beautiful restaurant on the 9th floor with huge windows all around and the view of all Havana. We didn’t have lunch so we got there at 6:30 and they did not open till 7. We then walked to Prado 115, a restaurant our concierge recommended for dinner, but we were disappointed in the food. After dinner we went to Hotel Sevilla for dessert but it was dead so we left. We took a pedicab to café Europa because they had good flan. But they would not let us sit at a table for dessert only and told us to sit at the bar. But there were no seats there so we left. We had soft serve ice cream on the street for our dessert.