Havana Second Round

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Back in Habana I find myself here a bit earlier than expected. Tattoo shop found and appointment made I am most definitely a happy camper. Had enough time and no plans to check out a cigar factory. Too bad I got there at about 3pm cuz they closed at 1:30. Not open sat, sun, or mon because of an observed holiday….blurg. But I did purchase a few stogies for the states to help me remember the great times I had in Cuba. Hopefully customs is cool about it! Its totally legal now, but who knows…anyways. There was a girl from Malaysia in the hostal and we went to Habana vieja to find the original bars of La Bodeguita del Medio and Floridita (the ones in Trinidad were franchised out and now there are a bunch of these bars all over the world). And it turns out that the invention of the mojito took place at the B del M as well as the original home of the daiquiri at the Floridita. Cool!!! Ive been many places where drinks were invented and I didn’t even know about these two so I was super happy to be enjoying the original recipe in the original location of invention and yay yay yay!!!! In reality the mojito was pretty tasty, soda water instead of sprite made it a lil less sweet than ive had before but super classic and the daiquiri tasted slightly like coconut with maybe a little banana and full on soap flavor….not my favorite. And it was the most expensive drink I had in Cubes the whole time….butts. But I still enjoyed the 50’s feel the bar/restaurant had and the fancily dressed waiters were funny little penguins to look at too. There was a suggested restaurant to try for their cheaper seafood options so we went to find that. What we found was an hour wait (Friday night….oops) but another suggestion of a place down the road with similar food. Turns out that place was an Italian pizza joint full of old people paying nearly $20 for a stupid pizza. Jeeeez. The guy who showed us the way found us running out of there and asked what was wrong. We explained we were really looking for some authentic Cuban food like beans and rice (which I haven’t even seen yet). He took us down this alley and that until we climbed up some stairs to someone’s home. A lady had two tables in her kitchen and proceeded to shallow fry some pork cutlet which we enjoyed with rice and cucumbers with some taro fries on the side. Woa. So classic, so fresh, so normal. Eating out at restaurants all the time gets a bit old with their portion size or the grease or whatever so this home cooked meal in some secret little back alley home was just about the best dining option one could hope for. Super epic. I really really enjoyed that meal. And then dude came back and we chatted quite a while all in Spanish about many many things. So amazing. Afterwards he lead us to some grand opening of some cool bar that spilled out onto the street where maybe 130 people were dancing and drinking the warm evening away. Too much amazing. At the end of the night I was out of cash but only had 4 drinks in me so I was ready to go back to the hostel and try this bottle I bought earlier. I could only take down one drink cuz I was so tired….lol. To bed! Good day….good day J

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