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| "View from the Paladar in Havana Old Town" 18" x14" Watercolor $400 |
Recently we returned from a wonderful land tour of Cuba with Road Scholar. Relations between the USA and Cuba have been thawing, though the embargo we placed on them remains. President Obama opened travel with Cuba, but it remains quite restricted. You travel on a cruise ship or with a sanctioned tour company. Of course, there have always been ways to get there, but they are illegal. We choose Road Scholar because the company was one of the first US companies in Cuba even before Obama's actions. They've been doing tours since 2010.
The day we arrived with our Road Scholar manager on a flight from Miami, we were met by the Havanatour Company guide, Eneides. The company is owned by the government ad we had been told activities and hotels could be changed at the discretion of the government. If changes were made, they were not evident to us.
The first sights we saw from the bus reinforced some preconceived ideas -- there are few cars, which are mainly the old US classics from the 50s or Russian Ladas; and the beautiful architecture is suffering from decades of neglect due to lack of resources. We spent the rest of the day until 5 pm touring the city before checking into our hotel, the Capri, where the stars stayed when filming the 50s classic "Our Man in Havana." We found many of our preconceived notions to be statically stuck in time and did not reflect Cuba today.
Old Town Havana is a beautiful area with a 16th century fort and handsome architecture. Some of the buildings have been restored and more are in the works. While having lunch on the rooftop of a paladar (a privately owned restaurant), we looked up to see a wonderful old building, badly in need of repair, where one of the apartment inhabitants had hung the wash on the balcony. Bob took photos for later reference.
I wanted to show everyday life in this busy city. It was important to show the aging walls of the building. I stumbled upon a good way to do the cracked areas after applying the overall texture with sponge and a mop brush. I happened to get too much paint on the paper and voila, I had a crack filled with dirt.
Here are a fews photos from our first day in Havana. The descriptions are quoted from Wikipedia.
The day we arrived with our Road Scholar manager on a flight from Miami, we were met by the Havanatour Company guide, Eneides. The company is owned by the government ad we had been told activities and hotels could be changed at the discretion of the government. If changes were made, they were not evident to us.
The first sights we saw from the bus reinforced some preconceived ideas -- there are few cars, which are mainly the old US classics from the 50s or Russian Ladas; and the beautiful architecture is suffering from decades of neglect due to lack of resources. We spent the rest of the day until 5 pm touring the city before checking into our hotel, the Capri, where the stars stayed when filming the 50s classic "Our Man in Havana." We found many of our preconceived notions to be statically stuck in time and did not reflect Cuba today.
Old Town Havana is a beautiful area with a 16th century fort and handsome architecture. Some of the buildings have been restored and more are in the works. While having lunch on the rooftop of a paladar (a privately owned restaurant), we looked up to see a wonderful old building, badly in need of repair, where one of the apartment inhabitants had hung the wash on the balcony. Bob took photos for later reference.
I wanted to show everyday life in this busy city. It was important to show the aging walls of the building. I stumbled upon a good way to do the cracked areas after applying the overall texture with sponge and a mop brush. I happened to get too much paint on the paper and voila, I had a crack filled with dirt.
Here are a fews photos from our first day in Havana. The descriptions are quoted from Wikipedia.
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Built initially in 1589 in response to raids on
Havana harbor, el Morro protected the mouth of
the harbor with a chain being strung out across the
water to the fort at La Punta.
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The basilica and the monastery of San Francisco de Asis
(Saint Francis of Assisi) were built in Havana, Cuba at the end of
sixteenth century (1580–91) as the home of the Franciscan
community, and were altered in the baroque style in 1730
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In Plaza Vieja. The plaza was originally called
Plaza Nueva (New Square).[2] It emerged as an open
space in 1559, after the Plaza de Armas and San Francisco.
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| Plaza de Armas |
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