We turn into the Paseo del Prado; a broad landscaped promenade flanked by roadways, and are deposited at the Hotel Inglaterra. She is the grande dame of Havana hostelries, well preserved, considering that she made her debut in 1875.

Her windowed white façade with wrought iron balconies overlook the Parque Centrale. It is a small palm-treed square crisscrossed with shaded walkways and framed by the well-cared-for Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana (The Fine Arts Museum) and El Gran Theatro de La Habana. The Theatro is an exuberant stone structure with an eye-popping inside double staircase of marble which leads up to vast exhibition spaces.

As we alight from the airport van we are enveloped in the guitar and saxophone sounds and conga beat

of the lively salsa band playing in the sidewalk café in front of the hotel. But in crossing the sidewalk to the hotel entrance its upbeat mood is countered by a gaunt man with his cupped hand extended to us and then crushed by a twelve year old pleading for “un peso.”

At nine in the morning Alicia, our city tour guide, whisks us aboard an air-conditioned bus which heads out to the Prado to pick up others in their hotels. In the daylight, we notice that the buildings alongside it are colonnaded, reminiscent of those along the Rue de Rivoli across from the Tuilleries and the Louvre. We pull up to the Havana Libre Hotel. Before the 1959 Revolution, when the government took it over, it was the Havana Hilton. Time and government ownership have not treated it kindly. Soon we are rolling up a tree-lined allée to the National, the beautifully preserved and only five-star hotel in Havana. Designed by the American architects, McKim, Mead and White, it hosted such admired celebrities as Winston Churchill, Marlene Dietrich and Errol Flynn – and some notorious ones as well. Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky were in residence in 1946. Lansky, incidentally, inveigled Batista into giving him a wing of the hotel in which he then opened a lavish gambling den known as the Casino Internacional.

With all tour attendees now aboard, we swing through the Miramar District. Before the Revolution it was Havana’s most beautiful residential neighborhood. It is filled with large Mediterranean mansions, all somewhat the worse for wear. Many now house schools or offices.

Our next stop is the Plaza de la Revolucion, an enormous paved public space in which Fidel Castro addressed more than a million Cubans on important occasions. The plaza itself was built during the presidency of Cuba’s infamous military leader, president and dictator, Fulgenxcio Batista. The site, originally named Plaza Civica, was renamed after the revolution by Fidel.  On the façade of a large modern building at one side of the Plaza is a huge image of Che Guevara underwritten with his famous slogan, “hasta la Victoria Siempre” (until the Eternal Victory).

But the centerpiece of immense plaza is the 357 foot high José Martí Memorial Tower fronted by a statue of the man himself. Martí, you may recall, is Cuba’s revered patriot, freedom fighter, writer and poet who was influential in bringing about Cuba’s independence from Spain. Sadly, Martí did not live long enough to see the expulsion of the Spanish in the Spanish American War of 1898.

I am approaching the column word limit, so inside information about today’s Cuban political realities, as well as bits about Ernest Hemingway’s haunts and about cigars, classic cars, jazz clubs, bars and restaurants and such will have to wait for the next installment. In the meantime, I don’t want to leave you completely high and dry. I’m ending by giving you the recipe for the Mojito which Hemingway himself drank in Havana birthplace, La Bodeguita del Medio. It should get you in the mood for the next installment:

1 teaspoon powdered sugar

Juice from 1 lime (2 ounces)

4 mint leaves

1 sprig of mint

Havana Club white Rum (2 ounces)

2 ounces club soda

Place the mint leaves into a long glass and squeeze the juice from a cut lime over it. Add the powdered sugar and then squash the mint into the lime juice and sugar with a muddler or back of a spoon. Add crushed ice, rum and stir. Top off with club soda. Garnish with a sprig of mint.