Insight Guides Cuba (Travel Guide eBook) by Insight Guides

Author:Insight Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Cuba
Publisher: Apa Publications
Published: 2022-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

Fire-breathing dancer in Guanabacoa.

Alamy

Southeast on the autopista (Via Monumental) is the suburb of San Francisco de Paula, 12km (8 miles) from the city center, with the Hemingway Museum at Finca Vigía 9 [map] (tel: 7962 0176; Mon–Sat 10am–5pm, closed when it rains). Journalist Martha Gellhorn, soon to be Hemingway’s third wife, was not content to live in a room at the Hotel Ambos Mundos. She found a house called Finca Vigía – a former cattle farm on the site of a Spanish fort. The couple bought it in 1940 for US$18,500, and, although Gellhorn later divorced him, Hemingway stayed on at the Finca for most of his life. The house lies at the end of a long, leafy driveway and is surrounded by lush gardens. The views over Havana are splendid. The mansion looks much as he left it, but was meticulously renovated by a joint US-Cuban project to restore the house and preserve the author’s papers. Among the relics are 9,000 books, Hemingway’s original Royal typewriter, and innumerable bullfighting posters and animal heads – mementoes from Spain and Africa. Visitors can only look in through the open doors and windows, but you get an excellent view of the large, airy rooms and their contents. Close to the main house is a four-story tower, from which the estate gets its name – vigía means ‘lookout.’ The pool where Ava Gardner swam naked and Gary Cooper once lolled, tanning his famous torso, is still there and Hemingway’s boat is in the gardens.

Santa María del Rosario ) [map] nearby is a lovely place with tall trees, colonial houses, and pleasant inhabitants. The main attraction is the 18th-century Catedral de los Campos, best visited on Sunday afternoon (Mass is at 2.30pm) – the only time you can be fairly sure of seeing the Baroque paintings and statues. Across the shady plaza is the restored Casa del Conde de Bayona, home of the Count of Bayona, a sugar baron notorious for executing a group of rebellious slaves. The execution site is marked on the Loma de la Cruz (Hill of the Cross), up a steep street from the plaza. The plain wooden cross was erected as a warning to other slaves, and two flanking crosses were added in 1959 to represent the thieves crucified with Christ.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.