Day: May 13, 2018

Trinidad. Cuba. Let’s Salsa!

/ brisbanefrannie / 4 Comments

Arriving in Trinidad was a different experience. It’s a cobbled city. Quite small with lots of coloured houses which gives a festive feeling.

It was raining when we arrived. The hot days are often punctuated with a downpour that lasts an hour or so.

It gave us a chance to check in and have a little rest.

The house we are in is on a street with lots of painted houses and some have a sign outside indicating they are a casa particular. They rent rooms to tourists. It makes such a difference to the lives of the people – making an income to supplement their government wage. Salaries are so low here. The owner of our house is an engineer who was paid 28CUC (about $28 a month). Renting a room, he can make about 20-30 CUC a night.

Our owner Reginald pulled out all stops in decorating our rooms. Ours is a beautiful blue and Marg’s is pink.

When the rain stopped we headed out to the cobbled streets walking towards the main square (and wifi spot!) it’s quite a busy little town and is known for its salsa clubs. Can’t wait to visit one!

We passed a few craft markets seeing things of a Cuba style. I just had to buy a bell for my collection.

We saw the Trinidad equivalent to the Spanish Steps. It was littered with people (mostly young people) on their iPhones taking advantage of the wifi.

Alex guided us around the town pointing out the best bars and coffee places.

We ended up for dinner on a roof top in another casa particular. It was a feast with far too much food. Simple cooking but nice ingredients. So far we’ve been fortunate to have Alex point out the best places to eat. The Government run restaurants look quite ok but are not good to eat at (according to our guide).

Walking back to our casa stumbling over the cobbles, we called into few craft places and I bought some cute ceramic earrings.

It couldn’t be the end of the night without a rum drink so as our casa also had a bar (in the kitchen!) we ordered a pina colada to enjoy before bed. It came with something pink floating on the top and was heavily laced with rum. Sleep came easily.

Today we headed to the beach. White sand clean water. Mojito.

Now we’re exploring the cobbled street of Trinidad and getting ready for salsa tonight.

A great dinner in a restaurant Alec suggested then off to salsa.

Some hot moves on the dance floor. There were a couple of men there to dance with the ‘lady tourists’ for tips I take it. Everyone seemed to be having a great time.

There was one girl. Turns out she was from Sweden and she was mesmerising to watch. She swayed and swung her hips. Her hands rotated above her head and we were entranced. Another had a lesson with a big guy with white trouser who swivelled those hips! We thought we’d like to have a go but thought we needed another lesson or 6!

Sorry. Photos hard to load!

Fantastic Fusterlandia

/ brisbanefrannie / 3 Comments

I love discovering places a little off the radar.

Our guide Alex suggested a place called Fusterlandia. What is it you ask?

It’s a ‘Gaudi ‘ style creation.

It’s a street , a park, an area. And if it stands still it’s covered in mosaic tiles.

Needless to say I loved it. I love mosaics and this is mosaics in the community.

Our lovely taxi driver knew about it and drove us there, told us about it and then waited for an hour or so while we explored. It cost about 40 CUC for his time and well worth it.

Leon the driver was a great character and was so friendly and helpful.

The local kids were playing on the chairs scattered along the street!

It really 2 streets with a park and some walls around an oval each house has decorated their own fence or house.

It’s quirky, it’s fun, it’s communal.

I think all communities could embrace something fun like this. The more entrepreneurial people had set up little craft or food stalls.

Some of the walls were devoted to other Latin American countries. So creative.

The art works we’re great.

And the cars matched the fun.

Later that evening our visit to the Fabrica de Arte was not so successful. Despite enquiries we got there and it’s closed till June. Never mind. No art no party salsa 💃🏻 tonight. So we had a lovely dinner before returning to the old town walking around and enjoying the lighting on some fabulous buildings. And dropping into the hotel Floridita. Hemingway’s drinking bar. We’d seen it on the movie we watched on the bus. So we drank a final Pina Colada and salsa – ed our way home. We were slightly disappointed there wasn’t salsa in every open plaza : square. That would have been fun!