Cuba - Lonely Planet [103]
Bar Dos Hermanos ( 861-3436; San Pedro No 304; 24hr) Despite its erstwhile Hemingway connections, this bar has (so far) managed to remain off the standard Havana tourist itinerary. Out of the way and a little seedy, it was a favorite watering hole of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca during a three-month stopover in 1930. With its long wooden bar and salty seafaring atmosphere, it can’t have changed much since.
La Dichosa (cnr Obispo & Compostela; 10am-midnight) It’s hard to miss the rowdy La Dichosa on busy Calle Obispo, despite the fact that it doesn’t display its name outside. Small and cramped with at least half the space given over to the resident band, this is a good place to stall for a quick drink before heading off down the road.
Café Taberna ( 861-1637; cnr Brasil & Mercaderes) Founded in 1772 and still glowing after a recent 21st-century makeover, this drinking and eating establishment is a great place to prop up the (impressive) bar and sink a few cocktails before dinner. The music – which gets swinging around 8pm – doffs its cap, more often than not, to one-time resident mambo king Benny Moré. Skip the food.
Taberna de la Muralla ( 866-4453; cnr San Ignacio & Muralla; 11am-midnight) Havana’s only homebrew pub is situated on a boisterous corner of Plaza Vieja. Set up by an Austrian company in 2004, it sells smooth cold homemade beer at sturdy wooden benches set up outside on the cobbles or indoors in an atmospheric beer hall. Get a group together and they’ll serve the amber nectar in a tall plastic tube, which you draw out of a tap at the bottom. There’s also an outside grill.
El Baturro (cnr Av de Bélgica & Merced; 11am-11pm) In the long tradition of drinking houses situated next to train stations, El Baturro is a rough-and-ready Spanish bistro with a long wooden bar and an all-male drinking clientele.
El Floridita ( 867-1300; Obispo No 557; 11am-midnight) Promoting itself as the ‘cradle of the daiquirí,’ El Floridita was a favorite of expat Americans long before Ernest Hemingway dropped by in the 1930s (hence the name, which means ‘little Florida’). A bartender named Constante Ribalaigua invented the daiquirí soon after WWI, but it was Hemingway who popularized it and ultimately the bar christened a drink in his honor: the Papa Hemingway Special (basically, a daiquirí made with grapefruit juice). His record – legend has it – was 13 doubles in one sitting. Any attempt to equal it at the current prices (CUC$6 a single shot) will cost you a small fortune – and a huge hangover.
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THE SEX TRADE
‘The one thing Castro can’t ration is sex,’ Cuban commentators have been prone to quip, and one look around the bars and clubs of nocturnal Havana, where impossibly attractive Cuban prostitutes stroll arm in arm with ageing ‘sugar daddies’ from Torino or Düsseldorf, is enough to prove them correct.
It’s ironic that in a state where rationing is a given and empty supermarket shelves are a wearisome part of everyday life, there usually seems to be no shortage of young, pretty señoritas ‘available’ for carnal relationships. Indeed, while technically illegal, prostitution in Cuba – which was equally rampant during the Batista era – is one of the few capitalist enterprises that the socialist government has so far failed to stamp out.
In the economic context, the situation is understandable. Contact with foreign men gives interested Cuban women access to interchangeable currency and the opportunity of bagging double a doctor’s monthly salary in a week. There’s even the not-so-remote possibility of spontaneous nuptials and the promise of a new and better life overseas.
For the planeloads of oversexed foreign males who fly in weekly to find out that they’ve been suddenly reborn as Brad Pitt, the attractions are equally libidinous. Indeed, Cuba’s growing reputation as an exotic mix of sun, sand, socialism and…sex, with no strings attached, has given rise to a whole new (unofficial) sex industry based on the well-tested economic laws of supply and demand.
Not surprisingly, the ‘rules