9 January 2025, Havana
La Mansion del Centro €25 (R495)

With dark humour, the woman who greeted us outside the Capitolio* this morning, gestured at the grandiose structure, saying: "This is the real Cuba." She then indicated the homes of the poor nearby, saying: "This is the fantasy."
Havana is rich and poor, sparkling and dirty, easy and devastating, fantasy and reality... Two sides of the coin inextricably linked within sight and sound and smell of each other.
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*"The National Capitol of Cuba... is a public edifice in Havana... The building was commissioned by Cuban president Gerardo Machado and built from 1926 to 1929... It is located... in the exact center of Havana."
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We walked the streets and squares of the old city, visited the Castle of the Royal Force ("the fort is considered to be the oldest stone fort in the America's"), and lunched well at La Vitrola just off Plaza Vieja.
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"Statues recently placed on two historic Old Havana squares reflect a modern attitude in a nation not known for its openness.
The Plaza de San Francisco was built in the 16th century just west of the Port of Havana. Named after a Franciscan convent on the site, the square originally housed a market and later became notorious for its gambling activities, including cockfights. Today, Havana’s cruise ship terminal lies at the eastern edge of the square. As more visitors began arriving in the area, the government undertook efforts to give the square a less austere look.
On May 25, 2012, the city dedicated a statue titled “La Conversacion,” or “The Conversation,” created by a French sculptor and donated to Cuba by the French ambassador. The elegant bronze sculpture, atop a marble plinth, portrays two people engaged in conversation, with large portions of their bodies missing. The artist’s apparent intent was to illustrate the frequent need for people who talk with each other to fill in the blanks in their expressed words.
Less clear is the meaning of another bronze sculpture, erected in 2012 in Plaza Vieja, a square just south of Plaza de San Francisco that became the site of the harbor market when the Franciscan monks objected to the noise of the market on their square. The sculpture, called “Viaje Fantástico” (Fantastic Voyage), depicts a voluptuous bald woman, nude but for her spike heels, sitting astride a rooster and resting an enormous metal fork on her right shoulder. The sculptor, a Cuban artist, has never revealed the meaning of his work. However, some Old Havana guides speculate that the evocative statue pays homage to the prostitutes who have long worked in the area, relying on their bodies for their next meal. So popular is this interpretation that the sculpture is often called the “Prostitution Statue.”"