Days of Doreese in Cuba: Day 4 Part 1

Monday February 29 2016 ~~ Day 4 Part 1

The last day of February begins with beautiful sunny skies in our pretty little plaza….

By 930 we are on our way to fit in as much as we can for our last full day in Havana.

Excellent food here! Trattoria 5 Esquinas

A quick stop at a shop that we had been to yesterday….I wanted a Che t-shirt as a souvenir. We looked for a few minutes, but the store had been freshly ‘fumigated’ and we didn’t want to linger. Uhoh…well, at least no zika virus for us! We’ll check back tomorrow.

We continue our wanderings towards Plaza de la Catedral. The church was closed when we were here on Saturday and we wanted to see inside. Some street scenes on the way…

La Catedral….Building began in 1748, completed in 1777. More information here…. Havana Cathedral

The sunlight was coming through one of the stained-glass vitrales …

Exiting the church, we remember our wonderful lunch a few days ago here…

We meander the streets in search of a particular shop called Casa de los Abanicos…hand painted fans. I thought it would be a nice souvenir for myself, and for our moms.

So many to choose from! From their website “The fan was introduced to Cuba during the colonial era and reached its peak in the late nineteenth century. During the War of Independence the Cubans used the fan to send messages through a secret code, thus circumventing Spanish surveillance.”

We finally pick out 3 and the on site artist paints ‘Cuba’ on them for us…

A pretty courtyard…

Then it’s time to find the post office to mail our post cards. I went into the post office and a gentleman points me in the direction of the ‘lion’. Really? I put my post cards in here? Let’s get a photo of this Vince because we will never see these post cards again! Haha! Well, we sent 6 post cards and all but 1 arrived at the correct destination within 6-8 weeks. The lion must have eaten that last one as it has never arrived. Still, a pretty good success rate and quite unexpected!

And since we’ve spent more than expected…those darn mojitos really add up!...it’s time to exchange some Canadian cash for Cuban CUCs. There was a line but it move steadily. They only allow up to 3 people at a time. While we’re standing in line we chat with the lady in front of us. American who had been spending some extended time in Mexico and decided to come to Cuba. She and her friend planned on staying a month or two, travelling around. She was hoping to get a cash advance on her USA credit card. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I didn’t think that would work. I hope I was wrong about that!

Going in to the cadeca…..for $200CAD I received $143CUC.

Right nearby is the Plaza de San Francisco…

And the Lonja del Comercio… The Lonja del Comercio (Commerce Market) building in Old Havana, Cuba served as the stock exchange in the capital until the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Today, it is an office building. Based in the building are local and foreign companies, the Brazilian Embassy, news agencies like the BBC, The AP, and the Habana Radio Station. Its construction began in 1907 and ended in 1909, on land that belonged to rich families. (Wikipedia)

It’s beautiful inside and we are surprised to see Iberostar offices! Vince pops his head inside just in case he should recognize any of our many Iberostar friends, but no luck.

The glass elevator looks tempting so we hop in and take it to the top floor. The view is amazing! I take a few photos of the view but then a security guard walks towards us shaking his head ‘no’. As in, oops, we’re not supposed to be up here! Lo siento! We hop back into the elevator very quickly! On that note, there are very nice washrooms here. 😀