Narrowly avoiding another missed flight connection, I made it onto the Cubana flight to Havana - the first Soviet airliner I've been on and also the first plane with a built-in smoke machine... As the (loudest ever) engines went into full thrust for take off, the cabin filled with cold water mist for added atmosphere... Havana is an amazing city, much of it the crumbing ruins of somewhere grand but with life going on regardless. Opulent houses with marble staircases and the remains of ornate plaster ceilings, apparently unpainted for decades. The famous 1950s American cars mixing with battered Ladas and Moskviches rattle along the pot-holed streets. Once-chic shops with huge cracked windows with nothing in them. And everywhere the hussle of people trying to sell you charlie, cigars, spliffs, girls, accommodation, restaurants. Music spills onto
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