Cuba - Lonely Planet [326]
Bandec General Lacret (Map; 62-75-81; cnr General Lacret & Aguilera; 8am-5pm Mon-Fri); Saco (Map; cnr Saco & Mariano Corona)
Cadeca Aguilera (Map; 65-13-83; Aguilera No 508; 8:30am-6pm Mon-Sat, 8:30am-noon Sun); Hotel Las Américas (Map; cnr Avs de las Américas & General Cebreco); Meliá Santiago de Cuba (Map; cnr Av de las Américas & Calle M)
POST
DHL (Map; 68-63-23; Aguilera No 310)
Post office Aguilera (Map; Aguilera No 519); Calle 9 (Map; Calle 9, Ampliación de Terrazas) Near Av General Cebreco; telephones are here too.
TRAVEL AGENCIES
Cubatur Garzón (Map; 65-25-60; Av Garzón No 364 btwn Calles 3 & 4; 8am-8pm); Heredia (Map; Heredia No 701 cnr General Lacret) Also has desks in Hotel Las Américas Click here, Hotel Libertad and Meliá Santiago de Cuba.
Gaviota (Map; 68-71-35; Villa Gaviota, Manduley No 502, Vista Alegre)
Havanatur (Map; 64-36-03; Calle 8 No 54 btwn Calles 1 & 3, Vista Alegre; 8am-noon & 1-5pm Mon-Fri, 8am-noon Sat) Additional offices in the airport and Hotel Meliá Santiago.
Oficina Reservaciones de Campismo (Map; 62-90-00; Cornelio Robert No 163; 8:30am-noon & 1-4:30pm Mon-Fri, 8am-1pm Sat) For information on the Caletón Blanco and La Mula campismos, Click here and Click here.
Sol y Son (Map; 68-70-96; Heredia No 701 cnr General Lacret) Superinformative office that can book hotels and offer advice.
Dangers & Annoyances
Santiago is well known, even among Cubans, for its overzealous jineteros, all working their particular angle – be it cigars, paladares, chicas (girls) or unofficial ‘tours.’ Sometimes it can seem nigh on impossible to shake off the money-with-legs feeling, but a firm ‘no’ coupled with a little light humor ought to keep the worst of the touts at bay.
Santiago’s traffic is second only to Havana’s in its environmental fallout. Making things worse for pedestrians is the plethora of noisy motorcyclists bobbing and weaving for position along the city’s sinuous 1950s streets. Narrow or nonexistent sidewalks throw further obstacles into an already hazardous brew.
Sights
CASCO HISTóRICO
Parque Céspedes & Around
If there’s an archetype for romantic Cuban street life, Parque Céspedes (Map) is it. A throbbing kaleidoscope of walking, talking, hustling, flirting, guitar-strumming humanity, this most ebullient of city squares is a sight to behold any time of day or night. Old ladies gossip sagely on shady park benches, a guy in a panama hat drags his dilapidated double bass over toward the Casa de la Trova, while sultry señoritas in skin-tight lycra flutter their eye-lashes at the male tourists on the terrace of the Hotel Casa Granda. Meanwhile, standing statuesque in the middle of it all, is a bronze bust of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, the man who started it all when he issued the Grito de Yara declaring Cuban independence in 1868.
Aside from a jarring modernist bank on its west side, Parque Céspedes is a treasure trove of colonial architecture. The Casa de la Cultura Miguel Matamoros (Map; General Lacret 651), on the square’s eastern aspect, is the former San Carlos Club, a social center for wealthy Santiagüeros until the Revolution. Next door British novelist Graham Greene once sought literary inspiration in the Parisian terrace bar of the Hotel Casa Granda (1914). The neoclassical Ayuntamiento (Map; cnr General Lacret & Aguilera), on the northern side of the square, was erected in the 1950s using a design from 1783 and was once the site of Hernán Cortés’ mayoral office. Fidel Castro appeared on the balcony of the present building on the night of January 2, 1959, trumpeting the Revolution’s triumph.
In the park’s northwestern corner lies the Casa de Diego Velázquez (Map; Felix Peña No 602). The oldest house still standing in Cuba, this early colonial abode dating from 1522 was the official residence of the island’s first governor. Restored in the late 1960s, the Andalusian-style facade with fine, wooden lattice windows was inaugurated in 1970 as the Museo de Ambiente Histórico Cubano (Map; 65-26-52; with/without