Carnival Paradise Review: Day 3 – Havanafeatured

Back last spring, when we were about to visit Russia, I was absolutely terrified. I wasn’t sure how anything could possibly prepare me to travel to a place unlike anywhere I’d ever been before. I had the same sense of anxiety tinged excitement for Havana.

None of my friends had been to Havana. Most people in my immediate age group haven’t, either – the restrictions that complicated travel between the US and Cuba have only recently lifted in the past few years, the first time in our lifetimes. I did some research the best I could, but there aren’t a ton of comprehensive reviews about cruising to Havana and really, there aren’t a ton of travel guides or blogs, either, since tourism in it’s current incarnation is such a new industry there.

Something I did read was that the view pulling into Havana was amazing and beautiful and not to be missed. I kept seeing 6:00 am on the posts I could find about Havana as a port of call, but I had no desire to be up that early in the morning if I did not absolutely have to be. So I was up at 7:30 am, and we were still long at sea.

The Carnival Paradise was scheduled to dock in Havana just after 11:00 am, but we later found out that we’d be delayed an hour and a half or so, as rough currents overnight slowed our travels from Tampa and we were still a ways away. But that was okay: I’ve done the whole morning sea day/afternoon port day thing before. It’s actually one of my favorite kinds of cruise days. So we started with a leisurely breakfast up on the Lido deck. I wasn’t sure if this cruise wasn’t all that full, or if the Paradise had a better passenger to space ratio, but we faced no lines and had no issues finding tables during the AM breakfast hours.

After breakfast, we headed downstairs to the United States Bar for a few rounds of trivia. The Paradise version of General Knowledge Trivia may have been the most difficult trivia session I’ve ever played at sea – I think the win went to someone who scored an 11 out of 23 possible points.

I gave up on trivia (musical theater trivia or bust, y’all) and we headed outside to the promenade to spend some time watching the water as we inched towards Cuba. Jaime would come over the PA system to announce our progress and what we’d see on each side of the ship (the city, the Malecón where the second Fast and the Furious movie was filmed and the pilot boat on the starboard side and the El Morro Fortress on the port side). The outer decks crowded as everyone tried to cop a view but we had some primo real estate up on the deck above the bridge. We even spotted some dolphins as we sailed into the channel, the shoreline transforming from dark shadows to a skyline in front of us. And can we just take a sec to talk about the fact that Havana has a skyline? I went on a yacht ride once in Sausalito around the San Francisco Bay, and watching the Havana skyline take shape almost reminded me of the San Francisco skyline from Sausalito.

 

We didn’t stay the entire time – we left just after we fully passed the fort to leave ourselves with enough time to grab lunch and stop at the room before we had to meet our tour at the Normandie Lounge.

Even though the ship was delayed, Carnival didn’t mention anything about tours being delayed. Our tour had a meeting time of 1:15 pm for a 1:45 pm departure, but our sticker number wasn’t even called until well after 2:30 pm. I used the extra time to get my things in the order I’d need them: Sail and Sign card, passport, visa (filled out completely and accurately on both sides) and cash to exchange for CUC’s (the currency of Cuba).

Passing through immigration was almost exactly like it was in Russia. We waited in a long line, our passports and visa’s were examined and stamped (and at some point, we passed through a health inspection where our temperatures were checked by some measure that we couldn’t figure out – or so we were told), we passed through a security check which ended right at the currency exchange, where we were asked to exchange in increments of $50. Exchanging dollars for CUC’s will result in a 10% embargo tax and a 3% exchange tax, so for $100, you get back 87 CUC. Some people will circumvent this by bringing Euros or Canadian dollars, but getting those currencies in the US generally comes at a less than favorable exchange rate (and some level of hassle) so I stuck with exchanging US dollars. We lucked out in finding ourselves in the shortest lines at every stop and we just kept passing right through.

We met up with our tour on the ground level of the cruise terminal and were the first ones there. We had booked the Tour of Havana in an American Classic tour and met up with the three guides assigned to our group of 34. One guide fell off as she got called back for another tour and the other two explained to us that there was not so great news: one, because we were so late, our time in the cars would be cut short. We had assumed that since we were in Havana overnight, the tour would just be extended but it seemed that was not the case. The second piece of bad news was that even though the images for our tour featured convertibles, our tour actually only had hard top cars. I felt there was some level of bait and switch there (wholly on Carnival’s level) for misrepresenting the tour, not being more proactive in getting us off the ship given we had been docked and cleared long before our tour meeting time and pushing communication of all of this to tour guides who had no part in these things, but I decided to push it out of my mind because I was in Cuba, this was a unique opportunity and I only had a limited amount of time here that I did not plan on wasting on being angry at circumstances beyond my control.

Our tour began on a motor coach that drove us to a parking lot where we could choose whatever cars we wanted. I was first off the bus and beelined to a beautiful blue car with white seats covered in vinyl and it was a lucky pick: the lead driver, Enrique, was the owner, and he spoke great English (most of the drivers, we were told, did not speak any English). We knew each car wouldn’t have a tour guide from the tour description, but I thought they would, like, walkie talkie in or something. It turned out they were going to rotate through at each stop, but given that there were only three stops and two guides, they would not make it into every car.

One of the guides, Diana, started in our car and we started the drive to our first stop, the Colon Cemetery. On our way there, Diana walked us through some brief facts about the island, focused largely on the religious landscape. One thing she did mention, though, was the frustration of the Cuban people over how the island was portrayed in the wake of Hurricane Irma. They felt that the US news stations were reporting that the island was in far worse shape than it was and, having seen some of the footage, I totally understood where she was coming from. The images we saw on the news was of flooded streets, hearing that there was a ton of damage and that no one knew it was coming because the island is so isolated from the media. The reality is the brunt of Irma was further east on the island and if it wasn’t all over the news, we would have never known a hurricane blew through: not so much as a palm tree was out of place or in ruins.

Our tour group reconvened at the front of the Colon Cemetery, where we’d take a short walking tour before hopping back into our cars. The Colon Cemetery is one of the largest and most significant cemeteries in all of Latin America. Designed by architect Calixto Arellano de Loira y Cardoso and named for Christopher Columbus, the cemetery was built in the late 1870s and currently houses more than 500 mausoleums and over 800,000 graves. In the middle stands this big, beautiful central cathedral, which was modeled after Il Duomo di Firenze (aka my second favorite structure anywhere). We followed our guides Jaime and Diana across the cemetery, down towards the cathedral, as they regaled us with the history of the cemetery, the famous interments and the architectural highlights.

Enrique was waiting for us outside the cathedral, and Jaime hopped in the car with us to give us some background on our next stop, the Plaza de la Revolución. The Plaza holds a ton of historical significance to Havana, as a center for political gatherings and rallies. The Plaza is studded by the José Martí Memorial, the National Library and the Palacio de la Revolución. We didn’t have any free time to explore any of them, but we did have a quick photo stop in the Plaza.

The final stop of our tour was at the Plaza de San Francisco, where we bid farewell to Enrique (who was really fantastic at giving us some of the history of the island and pointing out some of the points of interest as we drove past them when we didn’t have a guide in the car with us). The Plaza was across the street from the ship, and we were given the option to continue with the tour to a dance performance at a local arts center or leave and do our own thing. We continued on to the performance, which was a fascinating interpretive dance show in a wonderfully air conditioned theater.

The show ended just before 6:00 pm, which is precisely when most of the stores and souvenir shops close. Jaime walked us three or four blocks to a government run shop that sold Cuban rum, coffee and authentic cigars, hoping that because we were a rather large group that they would reopen for us, but no such luck. The tour kind of disbanded from there, and Keri and I opted to walk back to the plaza on our own so we could take some pictures.

Here’s the thing about walking around Havana on your own: the streets are beautiful. Absolutely stunning. Each building is a different color, in a different style and even the dilapidated buildings are beautifully unique. And on just about every street, locals will walk up to you, try to get you to visit their shop or buy their cigars. I never felt particularly threatened and as a wide generalization, the Cuban people seem rather nice, but we had at least a dozen people approach us on our three block walk. It was a lot.

We stopped in a bar we had seen earlier, Café Habana, because when you’re in Havana, you need to drink a mojito or a daiquiri. As I enjoyed my mojito (and fended off another local trying to sell me a cigar), I just kind of sat there and took it all in. Havana reminded me slightly of a pseudo Barcelona San Juan blend, but the vibe of the island was just so different and unique. It’s industrialized in a way that’s decades behind modern times and even though US to Cuba tourism had been open for a year when we visited, it still felt completely untouched by the tourism industry. The average monthly salary in Havana is 40 CUC. It’s insane to imagine supporting a family on such low means. But what this also means is that everything is super cheap in Havana: when we closed our tab at the bar, the server told us it was six. We thought that meant 6 CUC per drink, which was so cheap (especially when the ship’s mojitos were like $12!), but it was 6 CUC for both of our drinks total. How crazy is that?

Our walk through Old Havana continued as we took the scenic route back to the ship. I took pictures of as many colorful buildings and crumbling facades as my memory card would let me. We didn’t see many open souvenir shops so we stopped in some of the terminal shops as we reentered the cruise terminal. The cigar shop had the highest prices of the shops and most of the items sold there could be had at the general store across the terminal at lower prices.

There was a long line to re-enter the ship, but fortuitous for us was that the gangway was on deck 5, right outside our room (literally). Once we walked back on the ship, we were back at our room. We didn’t know this when we chose our room, but we were grateful for it: the heat index was in the upper 90s and humid — we were both practically shiny by the time we got back onboard.

Because we were overnighting, there weren’t a ton of activities planned for the evening. We had a quiet meal in the Elation dining room as we poured through our pictures for the day and contemplated if we wanted Warm Chocolate Melting Cake or the pie of the day.

After dinner, we spent some time on the promenade, enjoying the fresh air and the sights as the city lit up at night. The cruise terminal is centrally located, with a primo view of the Malecón and Plaza de San Francisco.

We headed back to the room after that and settled in for the night. We were absolutely exhausted, and the Cubs game was on ESPN, so it was an easy choice to stay in, relax, and watch the Cubs blow past the Brewers in extra innings for the second night in a row.

Keri fell asleep early. I couldn’t sleep. It was probably the coffee (again), but the anticipation was still reverberating through my entire being. I spent six hours in Havana and I was already falling in love with the city and its people. We only had a half a day on Saturday before we would leave port, and there was already so much more to see and do. I didn’t even know where to start.