the second day, and my thoughts on cuban men...

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In the afternoon we decided to go to a shopping centre. On our way we befriended two Cuban guys, Ernesto and Carmelo. Cuban people are friendly but quite bossy so we got bored of them pretty quickly. It's actually very hard to feel comfortable in their company because the cultural divide is so huge and you always feel like they want something from you. The vast majority stare you up and down, a large percentage of them try to chat to you, some of them shout "Taxi!" at everyone, of "Money?" and quite a few of them make this "Tsssth, Tsssth" sound at you, or the noise you make to call a cat, which we find really rude. I am quite disappointed with Cuban men in general, I expected them to all look like Che, but none of them do! Oh well.

So after early afternoon mojitos, we continued to the shopping centre. It was really cool. I found batteries for my camera which were a bargain at 1.30 pesos. We then ate pizza in the shopping centre cafe and after browsing the shops and exploring the area we made our way back to the hotel to get ready for the evening.

We went to the Taberna de Muralla for dinner, leaving the hotel at about 9pm. It was really dark outside, evidently the highly devorative 1950s streetlights don't work anymore. The restaurant was nice, it was supposed to be like an English pub but obviously it wasn't, they had a barbecue and Alex had barbecued pork, the vegetarian options weren't great, I had onion and cheese soup which was a bit like white sauce with cheese floating on top, I didn't eat the cheese because I don't seem to like Cuban dairy products (the butter and milk are not nice...). Main course was a vegatable salad of shredded white cabbage, carrot, beans and cucumber. After this, we decided to go back to the hotel before it got tooo late as the dark streets were a bit scary. We then went to the rooftop bar and listened to latin music and drank cocktails. I tried a Cuba Libre which is unsurprisingly nicer here than in England, despite their weird Coke.

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Comments

[lesley sunderland]

batteries
It sounds fab and I'm glad you are not letting those cubes intimidate you both! You have batteries in the outside front pocket of your suitcase next time you need some, ditto torch for those dark strolls back to the hotel. You will be at the Vedado by now - hope its ok and that you found the other things you were looking for at 5.30 this morning (our time - thanks)! in your suitcase. Bridget has cancelled lunch and Eddie is on the missing list so it looks like the Sunderlands are dining alone. I will record 24 tonight - can't wait. Take care. Love ya

[lesley sunderland]

mojitos
Cubra libre is easy - make sure you get the recipe for a good mojito! They say the Inglaterra ones are the best, do you agree? I e-mailed you just now to the kat address. x

[Sarah-L]

You guys make me laugh. Dairy is terrible here too. I'm getting used to the cheese mind. I'm gonna cook stuffed peppers for the family. If they have peppers here....i might have to employ abit of improv...