A Day Trip To Havana

After the wedding day and the many parties that took place during that day/night, I planned a trip to Havana for the very next morning. I have always wanted to see Havana and now this was the perfect opportunity do so. Waking up at 7 am was not in my agenda for a holiday but that was when the bus was leaving from the hotel to the big city.
I took a local tour instead of booking it through the hotel, since it was cheaper and I thought I would see more of the “real” local parts of the city. Although the day didn’t go as I hoped for. Once we got to the city after two hours journey there was a man on our tour who needed to go to the Canadian embassy. He said his passport had just expired and in order to get back in to Canada he need to revise his passport. So spending more then three hours at the embassy was not my plan of a trip to Havana. Although, afterwards we quickly zoomed around the city to see many of the major sights of Havana. Our first stop was strolling along the Malecon. It is the famous seafront walk, which stretches almost the length of Havana. From the Melecon you can view the second largest statue of Jesus Christ in the world. From there we explored La Habana Vieja, the old Havana. We took full advantage of walking and seeing the glorious Spanish colonial architecture and the narrow streets that lead to beautiful shady squares.
After a few hours of walking in and out of the old colonial district we soon made our way to the “New” part of town and where the more wealthy people live. It is called La Rampa. La Rampa is surrounded by many fine examples of art deco and eclectic architecture, which lays one of most famous hotels in the world called the Hotel Nacional. This hotel is where many famous people around the world have stayed, only because it is $800 a night, no wonder it’s usually only famous people catching sleep here.
One of our last stops before heading back to the resort was seeing where the first mass in Cuba took place. It was held under a tree called Ceiba, which now sits beside a small chapel called El Templete. The chapel had an interesting French design only because a French artist named Jean Bapiste Vermay created it. This Chapel was built in 1828, but the first mass took part in 1519, so it was many years before they decided to build a chapel. I thought this was one of the highlights of the trip to Havana, only because I love history so much that I thought this was pretty interesting to see.

On the way home we stopped at a small local bar that is known to have the best Pina colada in the country. Oh and let me tell you, it was the best one I have every tried. It was yummy. But my the time I got back to the resort I was so exhausted that this was the first night during my trip to Cuba that I actually went to bed before 4am. So as you can tell my trip was filled with much excitement.