Havana
Habana is a one-off.
Habana is a one-off.
You can take Santiago de Cuba in one of two ways: a hot, aggravating city full of hustlers and hassle that'll have you gagging to get on the first bus back to Havana; or a glittering cultural capital that has played an instrumental part in the...
Wrapped up for tourist consumption and packaged as a cheap alternative to Cancún, the seaside sprawl of Varadero greets you with an ambience more akin to coastal California or Florida than the archetypal tropical paradise you might have been...
La ciudad que más me gusta a mí (the city I like the best), reads a billboard on the Bahía de Cienfuegos, quoting the words of native singer Benny Moré.
Trinidad is one-of-a-kind, a perfectly preserved Spanish colonial settlement where the clocks stopped ticking in 1850 and – bar the odd gaggle of tourists – have yet to restart.
Rust-red soil, well-tended fields of tobacco, Chevrolets and Buicks rattling along rutted roads: the images of bucolic Pinar del Río Province are Cuban to the core.
Sprawled around a vast bay of the same name, visually arresting Matanzas is one of Cuba's cultural giants, awaking slowly from a long slumber.
Che city has long been hallowed turf for hero-worshipping, beret-wearing Guevara buffs, but away from the bombastic monuments the city pulsates with a vitality that includes some of the country's most eclectic nighttime entertainment outside Havana.
Predating both Havana and Santiago, and cast for time immemorial as the city that kick-started Cuban independence, Bayamo has every right to feel self-important.
First impressions matter – but they're not always right.
A small city of shady colonnaded shop-fronts, Ciego de Ávila is the most modern of Cuba's provincial capitals, founded in 1840.
Don't underestimate Sancti Spíritus.
You might well smell Pinar del Río before you see it: Cuba's tobacco capital, plunked in the middle of the fertile Vuelta Abajo, has prospered from its proximity to the plantations from which the best cigars on the planet are made.
Take a pinch of Tolkien, a dash of Gabriel García Márquez, mix in a large cup of 1960s psychedelia and temper with a tranquilizing dose of Cold War–era socialism.
Flanked by the Sierra de las Casas to the west and the Sierra de Caballos to the east, Nueva Gerona is a small, unhurried town that hugs the left bank of the Río las Casas, the island's only large river.
In Cuba you're never far from an idyllic beach.
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