After a short flight from Holguin we arrived at Havana, It was getting late and we were very tired after a very long day.  Unfortunately there was a large street party going on which made sleeping a bit of a problem.  We where staying at the Hotel National, which from the outside is one of the best hotels in the city that still has its 1920's charm.  previous guest include Winston Churchill, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemingway and Eva Gardner.  Everything about the hotel is great, the lobby, the restaurants, the grounds, except that is for the rooms.  We had booked a superior room so in such a grand hotel we were expecting a very comfortable and spacious room, unfortunately it is probably one of the smallest I had ever been in with just enough room for the bed, i will not even mention the cockroaches.  But we decided to look on the bright side as we would be only using the room as a base to explore this exiting city.

But, the weather had followed us and most days were raining, not just showers but torrential storms so we were unable to do half the things that we planned.  We did manage to visit the Revolution Museum, Plaza de la Revolution, and walk around the city.

One of the highlights came when I was walking around the grounds of the hotel and an old gardener came up to me and showed me around some tunnels which run underneath the hotel, these are not the ones that are normally shown tourists, but behind locked doors with some rooms still containing arms and ammunition incase of an invasion.  the old man tried his best to explain all the things to me but he did not speak any words of English and I speak next to no Spanish but I think I could get at what he was saying.  He showed me a picture of what I presume must have been from the Cuban Missile crisis of the hotel heavily fortified with soldiers and anti aircraft guns, he pointed to one of the soldiers to signify that it was him.

Below are some of the photographs that I took whilst in Havana.