I’d like to title this one:

“Give us this day our daily bread… by flagging down a roaming salesperson from your balcony and dropping a bag with money in it on a rope down to the ground level so it can be filled and you can pull it back up to your floor”

Yes, this is how many Havanans buy bread and other goods every single day from as high as 7 stories up. There’s never a moment without someone singing “Panaderoooooo!” (Translation: baker/breadseller) or the name of whatever they’re selling. You can also half lower your basket and tie it off and wait for the appropriate seller to come around…. so it’s kind of like fishing.

The vertical, low-tech lifestyle also means the way you ring someone’s home is by buzzing the whole building, running across the street so they can see you from their balcony, yelling up, and having them throw you down a key. Our host preferred to stick it in a rubber duck.  The entire building pops their head out to see if the guest is theirs, every single time, and no one seems to mind.

 

We were so fortunate to have our awesome Airbnb host Ana to explain all of this to us, so we could try fishing for bread ourselves! (Ana was invaluable to us as she helped us navigate and adjust to the city. For more info in using Airbnb to live with a local in another country and a $40 off coupon on your first stay, click here.)

 

The Museum of the Revolution: As Americans, we didn’t feel much love here. You can imagine why.

What follows are snippets of the most interesting things we saw.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thoughts while chowing down on some peso pizza (5 cents USD) for breakfast and standing on this corner:

Everyone says Cuba is a time capsule. But is it really true? If we were here in 1950, these buildings would be new. The cars would be new. Travel and commerce would be open to more countries, the rich would be richer and own almost all of the land, and the poor would likely be poorer and own nothing.

But right now, most everything you see in this picture is kind of jankey. I guarantee that at least one part of that car is held together by tape, string, or glue. The buildings have seen better days, but almost every family owns their home. So is it a time capsule? We’re not so sure. But it’s certainly different than anything else we’ve ever experienced.

 

We arrived in Cuba around 10pm at night, exhausted from a long day of flying, and walked like zombies up the 7 stories of our Airbnb. We didn’t look around at all and fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows.

Upon waking, this was our first view of Havana on our first morning in Cuba:

My first impression was just how vertical it all was. People on top of people on top of people, hanging out on porches, balconies, and roofs. We’d never been anywhere quite like it.