Cuba - Haunting Hemingway #19, 20, 21, 22 & 23

Photo# 19, 20, 21, 22 & 23
This is my last posting about my Cuban vacation, promise!

This series of photos has very little to do with photography and everything to do with documentation.

You see, I have inadvertently embarked on a quest to haunt Ernest Hemingway's ghost. I live in Toronto working for journalists (where he once worked as a journalist), I have been to Chicago (where he lived), vacationed at Walloon Lake in Michigan (where he used to vacation) and now I have visited all of his old drinking hangouts in Havana.

For once in my life I didn't care if the venues I visited were tourist traps, though I noticed most people just stopped to take photos outside rather than going in and actually having a drink. To me that was very odd, me I was drinking for Hemingway.

Like Ernest (if I am haunting him we may as well be on familiar terms) I had a mojito (ok, a couple of mojitos) at Bodeguita del Medico. A lovely bar with lots of wood panellng, not far from the Plaza del Cathedral, where they pumped out mojitos like nobody's business five or six at at time.

We wandered on, a little buzzed to El Floridita that is not only a former haunt of our dear Ernest but also claims to be the home of the daiquiri. If you are in the birth place of a drink you must sample it so we had two.

I loved the dinning room at the back of this bar, it was very 'old worldly' and I had an excited moment where I felt like I had been transported to another time, I admit that I automatically thought of Agatha Chrisite, I am sure Ernest would not approve.

Both locations, as is the case with many places in Havana, had a live band playing salsa music, so the scene was set perfectly.

By the time our demi-pilgrimage was complete I was very content and also a little dizzy, but what a way to go.

Thank you Ernest, your recommendations were excellent!

Photos: G. Szopa