After the late night on the Malecon, getting up at nine to clear out of the house was rough. Luckily “moving” only consisted of packing up and walking across the street. We got settled while Naudereh and Anand went to the bus station to try to secure a ride to Trinidad for the next day.
Dina, Hanna, and I had a wonderful conversation with our host, Luis, about US-Cuba relations.
Luis took us around the corner to the neighborhood cafeteria, Don Bello. The food was good by Cuban standards and we spent lunch discussing the different ways countries (i.e. the US and Cuba) spread wealth.
Following lunch, we went to an enormous warehouse filled with art from Cuban artists. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many painted canvases under one roof. After several hours of deliberation, Dina came away the winner with two gorgeous pieces at a good price, though Hanna got a great painting of an elephant in the rain with an umbrella. I picked up something small for Sophie, and Anand and Naudereh got some maracas, then went and got beers next door.
“Next door” turned out to be another converted warehouse home to Cuba’s nacent craft brewing scene. They had three beers, “dark”, “medium”, and “light”, which were all fair. At least on par with the Bucaneros we had been drinking. The live band was perfect, and at one point the lead singer managed to snipe Hanna and get a nice dance out of her.
From there, we headed to Chinatown for dinner, which locals hasen to mention no longer has any Chinese people in it (I was one of probably a half dozen people of any type of asian decent we saw the entire trip). The food all looked pretty bad, and they were out of every vegetarian option, so we high tailed it.
We scored a ride from a sweet 1957 convertible (which I think was a Plymouth Belvedere). At a stoplight, someone in the car next to us looked over and gave us a thumbs up, “Nice ride! That’s the only one on the island!”. After dinner at Plan B (which included a malt soda that tasted exactly like raisin bran), we called it for the night and crashed hard.