Our continued wanderings in Vieja

March 19 - 

After another long night's sleep, we awoke at the crack of noon in order to greet the day in Havana.  We ran into Erik as we were leaving and he told us that his wife and daughters and were ecstatic about the cosmetics.  He explained that they can't get anything like that in Cuba.  This made me very happy to have brought them along and glad that they were so well received.

We went to an Italian restaurant on Havana Street, and were pleasantly surprised at our meal.  We split garlic shrimp and pasta carbonara.  Both were excellent.  I was most impressed with the carbonara, as it was made in the traditional way, WITHOUT CREAM!

We then ventured toward the wharves walking through Plaza de Cathedral to see if there were any cruise ships docked.  Much to our surprise, there was a HUGE monster of a boat.  Our goal was to find a hotel in Havana for the back end of our trip.  We stopped in at Los Frailles, a former friary, which is now a hotel to  see if there were any vacancies for early April.  Nada, so we sat at the bar, after purchasing 2 wifi tickets (card you scratch off to reveal wifi password) and tried to see what was on AirBnB.  We found a place, and

were attempting to book, when time ran out on our card....We tried the other card, and could not get in for some reason, so we were sort of frustrated.  (We have since found out that because we were located in Cuba, we could not book on Airbnb!  Damn Embargo!)

We had agreed to meet Bernardo and Jerry at a bar at 5, and ended up getting confused about which bar on which corner.  We did find each other and had a meal together at a little street cafe just to the south of Plaza Vieja.  The meal was ok, I was not really impressed, but they raved about the tamales and so we tried them.  Needless to say, they were ok, but very doughy and very little filling.  I also ordered fried pork ribs which were more fat and gristle than meat.  Bill had the chicken cordon bleu, which was written in the menu as Gordon Blue, which looked to my eye as the winner of the night.  Jerry ordered a Cuban sandwich and Bernardo had his tamale.

At 8:30 or so, we said our good nights and good byes as J&B were leaving the next day to go back to NYC.  Bill and I headed back to our casa and he fell right to sleep.  I sat up and wrote this instead of sleeping.

We will get up early tomorrow as we want to register our passports at the US Embassy, and they only do it Monday - Thursday from 8 - noon.