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Cuba Hotels: 10 Reviews - 31 Photos
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Cuba Local Customs

by JessieLang

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Local Customs
by JessieLang
Peso store for food
by JessieLang
A bottle of Cristal beer, Cuba
by SWFC_Fan
A Bucanero beer in Santiago de Cuba
by SWFC_Fan
Ration book
by JessieLang

Most Viewed Local Customs in Cuba

Holguin City Holguín

3 Reviews There is a lot spainish in Cuba, also the buildings. If you like the spainish buildings there are alot of pictures you can make just of the buildings. So bring enough. This building has a balcony and...

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Cuban Music Santiago de Cuba

1 Review The famous "Casa de la Trova" in Calle Heredia - exchange of emotions between a teacher and his student (a Cuban music player living in the Netherlands ) - we had a great time. But no misunderstanding...

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Trinidad People Trinidad

2 Reviews In most of the Cuban Cities it is an experience to visit the local temples of music and that made my second trip to Cuba so different Like this building - not that far from the Plaza Mayor This island...

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Give Aways Holguín

2 Reviews Get to know the locals. They are the best people but remember they are poor. Bring lots of clothes and toys for the children. One little girl her toy was an empty toothpaste box. We litterally gave...

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Practical Santiago de Cuba

2 Reviews During your visit of Moncada garrison you'll see that part of it is school as well (Mr.Casto decision)... it's strange that we passed and kids had exam...with open door and none told us to be quite or...

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Religion Santiago de Cuba

2 Reviews Christmas in Cuba this year passed with little more observance than the tiny plastic Xmas tree for me. Some of my Cuban friends did attend church as usual but there was none of the comercialization...

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Reviews from VirtualTourist Members

Cuban beers

by SWFC_Fan

When most people think of Cuban alcohol it is likely that rum is the first thing that comes to mind.Or maybe one of Cuba's famous cocktails: the Mojito, the Daiquiri or the Cuba Libre.I'm pleased to report that Cuba also brews a range of good beers!The two most common beers that I encountered during my stay were Bucanero Fuerte and Cristal.Bucanero Fuerte is a fairly strong 5.4% lager. Other beers in the Bucanero range include Bucanero Max (6.5% volume) and Bucanero Malta (alcohol free), neither of which I tried.Cristal is a lighter, crisper lager (4.9%) which I found to be better suited to the hot Caribbean weather than Bucanero is.During a hot day of sightseeing in the town of Gibara, I enjoyed a cold can of Mayabe at the El Caribe bar; a light, smooth and refreshing 4% lager. The other beer on offer at El Caribe was Cacique which sadly I never got to try.All of these beers are brewed...

NUEVA TROVA

by swesn

Trova is folk-ballads played with guitars. The genre usually involves some sort of protest songs. Nueva trova evolved in the late 1960s by Pablo Milanes (in Spanish), Silvio Rodriguez (in Spanish) and Noel Nicola. Their social criticisms and views of life are expressed beautifully in this sort of musical poetry.

Santeria

by toonsarah

Santeria is the cult religion of Cuba; a unique blend of the beliefs of the slaves brought to the island from Africa and the Christianity their masters tried to force them to adopt. In order to protect their culture, while appearing to conform, the slaves depicted their African deities (from the Yoruba culture of south-western Nigeria) as duplicates of Roman Catholic saints. According to the beliefs of Santeria, everyone is born under a guardian saint who must be worshipped throughout his/her life. The guardian saint is central to all rites and magic performed in Santeria. Rituals may involve the use of herbs, roots, and flowers, but also at times the sacrifice of birds or animals, such as roosters, turtles and goats (depending on the saint’s perceived preferences). Other rituals include entering a trance state for communicating with the ancestors and deities and sacred drumming.In...

Che Guevara

by toonsarah

Wherever you go in Cuba you will see images of Che Guevara. Statues and monuments in the towns, billboards at the side of the road in the countryside, t-shirts and baseball caps for sale to tourists – you cannot escape from him! I first encountered Cuba’s national hero as a student in the seventies, when no bed-sit was complete without a poster of him on the wall. It was fascinating so many years later to see the same image everywhere I looked.Although such a hero in Cuba, Guevara was Argentine by birth. As a young medical student he travelled throughout South America (try to see the film “Motorcycle Diaries” if you are interested in this part of his life) and the poverty he saw helped shaped his radical communist views – a reaction to the capitalist and imperialist legacy of the European colonists. While living in Mexico City he met Raúl and Fidel Castro and joined their 26th of July...

Cigar factories

by toonsarah

Make sure you visit a cigar factory while in Cuba. There's one in Havana (behind the Capitol near Parque Central) and lots of tours in the Vinales region. In these larger enterprises photography is banned or severely limited, but we also found a little one-man operation in Trinidad where for a small tip we could take as many pictures as we wanted.The bigger factories are nonetheless interesting to tour, and you learn a lot not only about the process of cigar-making but also about the culture of Cuba in general and the cigar industry in particular. For instance, we were told that none of the employees is ever taught the whole of the process, as that would mean they could leave and set up their own business in competition, probably under-cutting the big companies and also possibly having a detrimental effect on the industry by producing sub-standard goods (our tour guide’s view, not...

Old cars

by toonsarah

One of the iconic sights of Havana is definitely the large number of classic American cars on its streets. Because it's been difficult for many Cubans to purchase new cars since Castro took over in the late 50s, many inhabitants have instead devoted their efforts to maintaining the car they owned prior to the revolution. If you love old cars, or simply enjoy the interesting photo opportunities they offer as we do, Havana is a paradise! It’s possible to hire one of the cars for a tour of the city but we weren’t able to find a driver willing to give us just a short ride, and we didn’t want to do the full tour, so we contented ourselves with just looking and photographing all that we could find. But if you want to do a tour, a good place to find a car is in front of the Museum of the Revolution on the west side of the old town.

India and Cuba

by cochinjew

You should remind your Indian National Friend that India was one of the first countries to recognize the change in government when Fidel took over.. Fidel has a very soft spot for India and he proudly shows the picture of Indira Gandhi with him and by the way the same photo hangs in the Indian embassy in havana.Having said all that, Cuba does not discriminate based on nationality: EU nor non EU citizens who are tourists are afforded the same courtesy. If you have a tourist card or visa ( almost every one travelling to cuba get their tourist card at the airport of embarkation but i found out that it is not so in France!)..once you have the tourist card, it is very very seldom that they even ask about the accomodation.. in fact you can put down the address of a casa particulares, which is legal. If you need to know addresses and particulars of casa particulares, you can check these pages...

cuban proposal

by adduse

HI im in the same boat, and was wondering about transporting the ring. Hand luggage seems the way to go but are they likely to open the bag in front of our soon to be misses and say" whats this"Can you bring diamonds into cuba

Santaria

by AnjaV

The Afro-Cuban religion.Too long to explain in this tip, but very interestingWhen going to Cuba you can learn more about this when you have the time to visit Callejon de Hamel in Centro Habana at Sunday afternoon at 12:00 noon untill around 5:00 pm. For their weekly rumba sessionsMore about Callejon de Hamel, check out the website below

The Cuban Cook CUC

by cochinjew

This currency, CUC (cook) for short was created especially to drag into the government coffers as much of the remittances from abroad, and have a control over it. The Cubans living abroad, in USA and Europe, send an estimated one billion dollars per year to the island. Cuba has had separate stores for foreigners and locals, long before it opened itself to tourism, the stores used to be called Diplomatic stores. and you have to have foreign currency to shop in them.when tourism increased, more and more money was coming into the country and once again the government wanted a slice of it ( actually they get most of it) and keep an account. they created CUC and offered all services in that currency. for example hotels are in CUC, taxis with meters are in CUC, the departure tax is in CUC. it is not a onvertible currency in that it is not accepted anywhere else in teh world except Cuba. while...

Top 3 Hotels in Cuba

Villa Las Brujas Cuba

2 Reviews and 51 Opinions I could have chosen Okay but some problems, but I still think it falls too short to express how...

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NH Parque Central Havana

8 Reviews and 1262 Opinions This is a jewel of a hotel, located just a block or two away from Old Havana, and the shops of Calle...

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Iberostar Varadero Varadero

5 Reviews and 1866 Opinions great food gained 5 lbs on the french sauces whatch out for the car rental guy Frank , he takes the...

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Questions and Answers

Q: We're hoping to do Eastern Cuba in December, we've already done the west. I'm trying to book flights, ideally from Manchester. I...

A: flights domestically it is, aerocaribbean do it, as you are in Manchester check the Cuban tourist office http://www.travel2cuba.co.uk/ hope it helps cheers

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