burnt

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After missing breakfast we decide to go and explore. We walked along the seafront and saw many cool things ' a huge monument with hundreds of black flags flapping noisily in the wind, a shiny black monument to a guy on a horse and so on.

The amount of propaganda in cuba is amazing. Everywhere it says things like "Patria o muerte" and "libertad." I have never seen the word revolucion so many times in my life, and the cuban flag flies everywhere alongside slogans by Fidel. Their hatred of americans was particularly evident today as we passed a few anti-American billboards ' from the relatively unhardcore derisions of "El Plan Bush" ending with the slogan "Gracias, ya vivimos en Cuba Libre" and cartoons mocking Uncle Sam, to a mock film poster "El Asesino (the Murderer)" showing george Bush with fangs and blood dripping from his mouth and a pictorial sum ' Bush plus (a mystery person we don´t recognise) equals Hitler.

We walked past some magnificent colonial buildings after looking at clothes and buying faux flowers in a shopping centre and ended up in a beautiful square. It was so wonderfully hot and sunny, we decided to stop to sit on a bench there. The square had such a Caribbean vibe, it was so relaxed and nice. Lots of people came and chatted to us, like a sweet oldish lady, so typically Caribbean, because tyhe group of people across the road wanted to knbow where we were from. She asked us questions about London. People constantly ask us where we are from. But notably...an old man came to guess where we were from. He guessed ' American, Italian, Bolivian, Russian, Swedish, then back to Bolivian. Interesting!

We then went to La Coppelia which is cuba´s special ice cream place. It is stunning architecturally and the ice cream is delicious. I had a chocolate swirl sundae and realised I was sunburnt. And I never burn! Even my forearms were burnt!

That night Alex and I dressed really Londonish in little smock dreses with leggings. We watched the beautiful sunset then we went to the Nacional, Havana´´s best hotel, for dinner.

After a really yummy meal we went to the bar, past pictures and messages from previous guests such as Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss. Winston Churchill stayed there too but he failed to leave a signed pic.

We went to the terrace bar there for cocktails and met a guy from guess where - west hampstead/kilburn! just proving the cliche "it´s a small world" so so true. He´s just along the jubilee line from us! We had lots of cocktails together and talked about things like uni, Cuba and Biffy Clyro.

Eventually the cocktails started to take their toll on us. We took some photos we don´t even remember taking. We walked back to the hotel and once we were there Alkex got a bit sick. I used my au pair skills to force her into pyjamas , very merrily due to my own drunkenness. She was to spend the next day nursing a hangover....

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Comments

[Sarah-Louise]

I agree
I've always thought you guys look Bolivian.