I thought I would do a quick report on our honeymoon incase anyone is thinking of goint to Cuba or still trying to decide where to go!
we had 7 days in Havana staying at the Hotel National and 7 days in Guardalavaca stayin at Paradisus Rio de Oro restort (5star, all inclusive, children free!)
After a long flight, we arrived late at the Hotel National which was an impressive hotel! I was so excited when we got to our room to discover that Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardener had stayed their on their honey moon! It turns out that our floor they were keeping in the design it was originally in the 1930’s and a few of the rooms have plaques outside to tell you which famous person has stayed there!
We went for a wonder and realised that we weren’t too far from old Havana but we would explore properly the next day.
We had our rep meeting first thing and there was another couple also on their honeymoon, after which we wondered off into old Havana.
We saw so many old cars, not just for the tourist, so many residents have them, we had a mojito at the Barcardi building and lunch on the harbour.
We did a LOT of walking, though old streets, stopping at bars for a drink and to listen to some jazz. We also went to the Havana Club Rum museum which has a great bar next to it with a fab band. Walking back through Old Havana we stopped for a drink and spotted the other honeymoon could and got chatting and decided to meet up for dinner later on in the week!
The next morning we went to see the rep and bumped into the honey moon couple again and we got chatting, then decided to have a mojito, which led to god knows how many, after so many days walking around it was really nice to have a day sat at the hotel drinking mojitos with our new friends! That night we went to Club Tropicana which was brilliant. OH was really sceptical about it but enjoyed it (a day of mojitos may have helped!)
The next day we went back into old Havana, visited a cigar factory which was fascinating, everything was done by hand, there are no machines at all and their training is quite intense!
We got went to the harbour again to mootch around the indoor market then we got a ride back to the hotel in a 1946 Chevrolet!
That night we went for a wonder to a Jazz bar that had been recommended.
There is so much to see and do in Havana and I am so glad that we had 7 days there. Especially as our hotel was a little way out of central Havana. Im sure if you stayed in the centre you could probably see and do everything in 3 days but I enjoyed breaking it up with our Mojito day!
Our transfer for our internal flight picked us up at 3 am! Yuck! We had an interesting flight on a rather old looking plane! We arrived at our resort just after 9am and it looked stunning, our bags were taken off us and we were sent straight into breakfast where i was impressed that one section of the buffet had the ingredients for bloody Mary and a bucket of champagne! I knew i was going to enjoy being all inclusive! We had an amazing week in Guardalavaca. The beach was glorious and you could walk up to a reef where we went snorkelling and saw some amazing fish and an little octopus!
The food was delicious, there was the main buffet you could have breakfast, lunch or dinner in then there were 5 separate restaurants, we tried the Cuban and Japanese.
As we were honeymooners, we had a bottle of champagne waiting and fruit and we got invited to a special dinner on the beach one night!
There were plenty of activities and we had fun with archery, its not the same as on the Wii!
Our internal flight back to Havana was early so we had about 5 hours to kill in the centre again b4 heading to the airport, luckily another couple were in the same situation so we went for more mojitos with them. When we got to Havana airport we met up with the couple from our fist hotel and the 6 of us....you guessed it, drank mojitos!!
It was absolutely brilliant and i would thoroughly recommend Cuba.
If anyone has any questions, just ask!
