Wednesday 13th April, Sailing into Havana - Cuba

So today was lovely and restful, we didn't have to do anything - so we did nothing in particular. We caught up on the blogs, drank tea on the back deck, and read. Wonderfully relaxing.

The reason we were able to take it so easy was because today is not technically a sea day. We sailed into Havana at about 5pm. Everyone was on deck to get the first views.

The dock wasn't very big - and the MSC Opera, a much bigger ship that had arrived before us, could only fit the first two thirds alongside the pier. The Voyager is smaller, and should have been fine, except................

The sailing boat had arrived ahead of us and docked at the top end of the pier. Our ship could not quite fit on well enough to line our exit door with the gangway provided by the Cuban port authorities, (which we had to use apparently). Anyway, the yacht had to move forward to allow us to nudge in. I believe there may have been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between our captain, the port authorities, and the yacht resulting in some rather impatient blasts of the Voyager horn. The yacht moved forward quite quickly then, and our ship moved the 15 feet forward that we needed to be able to park.

Peter and I had no idea what to expect from Havana, we'd heard about the old cars, but that was about it. . After dinner, we thought we'd take a quick walk around the city to see what we could see. Well......... we had a very pleasant surprise in store.

We decided we loved the place, and wished we'd come out armed with Cuban dollars and more time to sit and soak up the Havanah atmosphere.

If you look closer, you'll see that the barriers to prevent cars are actually cannons

The place was wonderful, vibrant and alive. Classy hotels, with very much a 1940s-50s feel

These stood on the corners of streets full of the residences of people who obviously couldn't afford to walk through the front doors. We couldn't understand these homes - open doors straight onto the street revealed living rooms of that seemed to be set up in the front foyer or entrance of what used to be a business, or hotel, or apartment block. We couldn't work them out?

And of course, the classic cars were everywhere. I was surprised at how big they are. Most of them seemed to be used as taxis, and some of them were beautiful.

Yep! After our short walk, we decided we really like Havana. We've both got tours tomorrow, to different places. I'm supposed to be sail down a river through an underground cave and I'm quite excited about it.