We turned right out of the apartment building and walked a couple of blocks over to the main thoroughfare that runs through Vedado. A few birds flew overhead, one car drove by. It was almost noon but everything was eerily still on this second day of exploring Havana.
So eerily still, until we turned onto famous Avenida Within one block, it suddenly seemed as if we had been transported into a completely different city than what we had witnessed the day before.
Here were restaurants, a couple of bars, a scattering of shops, a cinema, a small group of prostitutes, a huge art-deco hotel, food stalls, a market and hundreds of people moving around everywhere.
There was a higher level of that Caribbean oomph in the way people walked and talked and went about theirβ¦whatever it was they were going about. It could have been almost anywhere, it could have even been Miami Beach, maybe a couple of decades ago. At the far end of Avenida 23, where the road gently slopes down before reaching the water, we hailed an old-school Lada taxi and drove off to Plaza Viejo in Old Havana. We ate lunch at Variedades Obispo β a local fried chicken and rice joint where you sit at a long, old, dirty, yellow bar and eat your food, with either a local beer or an orange soda.
We stumbled into art galleries so full of fascinating pieces that could only come from those who are forced to express themselves in unique ways. We ate pork sandwiches from a guy serving them up from behind a small table on the edge of the street. The blazing hot day rolled along β a fortress visit here, a coconut shell full of ice cream there, looking through old coins and passports and trinkets at the market, walking down side streets and into random plazas β until it was time to rest.
