Too Many Photos of Havana
Apr. 10th, 2018 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
I spent a lot of time being distracted as I wanted to finish writing Direct Current, and then more time trying to whittle down my photos of Havana into a reasonable number for posting. And then I said sod it, this is how many there are, and it's a lot, and so what?
We stayed in the Parque Central Hotel, an old, centrally located building arranged around a glass-roofed courtyard.
View from our window - classic Havana mix of beautiful old buildings and derelict shells.
Looking down to the street.
The Parque Central for which the hotel is named - it's definitely more of a city square than a park.
A short walk from the hotel takes you to Plaza 13 de Marzo.
All the streets around the hotel contained a mix of beautifully maintained old buildings and those that had rather lost their shine over the years.
It was odd that you could find one building that was extremely well kept sometimes sharing a wall with a roofless husk.We drove past a lot of those, but I was never able to get a good photo to illustrate it. The exact same thing was true of the old cars for which Havana is famous - they were either loved and cherished and polished to within or inch of their life, or they were mostly rust and filler. There just didn't seem to be any middle ground.
Havana street at night.
In 1762, the British captured Havana from the Spanish, and held it for six months before they traded it back to Spain in exchange for Florida. The Spanish then spent a fortune fortifying the coast around Havana so the Brits couldn't do that again. We visited the Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro.
View across the bay to Havana from the fort.
Looking north over the open Caribbean.
The Canal de Entrada separates east and west Havana at the harbour mouth.
The entrance to the tunnel beneath the canal. More infrastructure projects should be painted sky blue instead of being left concrete grey.
Cars of the well loved variety at the fort.
After the fort, we went to a craft market, where it seems the artists are at the forefront of the gay rights movement, as always.
And then on to lunch at a restaurant that we would never have known was a restaurant if we hadn't been taken there because there was nothing useful like a sign outside. It looked like we were going to someone's house, but upstairs there was a beautiful indoor dining room and two outdoor terraces. There was also a cozy nook of a seating area half way up the stairs.
After lunch we went on to the Plaza de la Revolucion, where there are big silhouette images of revolutionary leaders on the buildings.
And more shiny cars for the tourists to admire.
Then it was walking tour through the oldest part of Havana, with many narrow and/or pedestrianised streets.
The Plaza de la Catedral.
Interior of the cathedral.
Winding through a few more streets to the Plaza de Armas.
Eccentrically ornate streetlamp and a tree.
Classic Havana, with a few cranes to show how fast things are changing.
Once you go outside Havana, of course, everything's very different, but that's another post.
We stayed in the Parque Central Hotel, an old, centrally located building arranged around a glass-roofed courtyard.
View from our window - classic Havana mix of beautiful old buildings and derelict shells.
Looking down to the street.
The Parque Central for which the hotel is named - it's definitely more of a city square than a park.
A short walk from the hotel takes you to Plaza 13 de Marzo.
All the streets around the hotel contained a mix of beautifully maintained old buildings and those that had rather lost their shine over the years.
It was odd that you could find one building that was extremely well kept sometimes sharing a wall with a roofless husk.We drove past a lot of those, but I was never able to get a good photo to illustrate it. The exact same thing was true of the old cars for which Havana is famous - they were either loved and cherished and polished to within or inch of their life, or they were mostly rust and filler. There just didn't seem to be any middle ground.
Havana street at night.
In 1762, the British captured Havana from the Spanish, and held it for six months before they traded it back to Spain in exchange for Florida. The Spanish then spent a fortune fortifying the coast around Havana so the Brits couldn't do that again. We visited the Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro.
View across the bay to Havana from the fort.
Looking north over the open Caribbean.
The Canal de Entrada separates east and west Havana at the harbour mouth.
The entrance to the tunnel beneath the canal. More infrastructure projects should be painted sky blue instead of being left concrete grey.
Cars of the well loved variety at the fort.
After the fort, we went to a craft market, where it seems the artists are at the forefront of the gay rights movement, as always.
And then on to lunch at a restaurant that we would never have known was a restaurant if we hadn't been taken there because there was nothing useful like a sign outside. It looked like we were going to someone's house, but upstairs there was a beautiful indoor dining room and two outdoor terraces. There was also a cozy nook of a seating area half way up the stairs.
After lunch we went on to the Plaza de la Revolucion, where there are big silhouette images of revolutionary leaders on the buildings.
And more shiny cars for the tourists to admire.
Then it was walking tour through the oldest part of Havana, with many narrow and/or pedestrianised streets.
The Plaza de la Catedral.
Interior of the cathedral.
Winding through a few more streets to the Plaza de Armas.
Eccentrically ornate streetlamp and a tree.
Classic Havana, with a few cranes to show how fast things are changing.
Once you go outside Havana, of course, everything's very different, but that's another post.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-11 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-11 02:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 03:32 am (UTC)Apart from the tanks of course!
no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 05:21 am (UTC)