Of all the capital cities in the Caribbean, Havana has the reputation for being the most splendid & sumptuous. From strolling along the Malecon & exploring La Habana Vieja (Old Havana), to Museo Ernest Hemingway or the tropical beaches of Playas del Este, this guidebook will help you make the most of your visit to this intriguing city. * Essentials section with indispensable information on getting there & around. * Highlights maps of the region so you know what not to miss. * Comprehensive, up-to-date listings of where to eat, drink & sleep. * Detailed street maps for Havana & its key municipalities. * Slim enough to fit in your pocket Loaded with advice & information on how to get around, this concise Footprint Handbook will help you get the most out of Havana without weighing you down. ...

An indexed street plan of the Havana at a scale of 1:12, 000 showing the UNESCO site Old Town & the surrounding districts, which also features an indexed overview map of Central Cuba at a scale of 1:420, 000. The Havana street plan portrays the city’s road & rail network, as well as petrol stations. Some places of accommodation & of visitor interest are shown, particularly in the Old Town & central Havana. A comparably large number of football stadia/fields are dominantly indicated. The map shows the regional road network from expressways main roads to secondary roads & tracks, as well as en-route petrol stations. Rail lines, ferry routes, harbours & airports are located. Also shown is a handful of visitor related sites & beach & water sport sites, as well as reefs & swamps. Some spot heights are given, with colour shading indicating land height. ...

Havana in the Wallpaper City Guide series, published by Phaidon & encompassing a collection of pocket-size guides dedicated to the best design elements in major cities. Compiled by experts at the Wallpaper magazine, the guides are widely recognized for appealing to design-conscious travellers & are aimed at those interested in art, design & architecture. Each guide identifies the best bars, restaurants, hotels, places to shop, leisure activities & excursions with a unique emphasis on the finest examples of unusual architecture & design. Each Wallpaper City Guide has the same layout, with separate tabs allowing readers & travellers to access individual sections easily. The tabs consist of Landmarks, Hotels, 24 Hours, Urban Life, Architour, Shopping, Sports & Escapes. High quality colour photographs appear alongside brief descriptions of each hotel, bar or attraction, highlighting distinctive & unusual styles of architecture & design. Extra pages are provided at the back of each guide, allowing readers to record their own notes & sketches. ...

Havana & the best of Cuba in the City & Regions series from Time Out; comprehensive guides to a range of cities & their surrounding regions & including some of the most detailed listings & directories of places to eat & drink & things to do & see. Time Out guides are strongly focussed on local entertainment & nightlife, in addition to principal sights & attractions, with expert local writers providing an encyclopaedic knowledge of each city. This unique quality has ensured that the guides have won a reputation for their accuracy & reliability. The surrounding region is also incorporated in some guides, with information on the principal attractions, sites, landscapes & the best way of exploring them. Each of the Time Out city & region guides has a similar layout, allowing visitors to explore their destination easily. An ‘ In Context’ introductory chapter profiles the destination with several local writers providing individual insights into different aspects of their city & the wider region. An extensive sights section is arranged by area &

Includes:: information about principal attractions in addition to dedicated walking tours & information boxes on particular places of interest. An escapes & excursions chapter also covers some of the highlights found just beyond the city limits or the must-see attractions in the specific region. The ‘ Consume’ chapter is organised into hotels, restaurants & cafes, bars & shops & services & provides an enormous array of ways to explore the destination. Individual establishments are accompanied by detailed descriptions & include useful information on opening times, prices, location, address & the type of food & drink available. An Arts & Entertainment section provides extensive listings & details of art galleries, books & poetry, cabaret & comedy, children’s activities, clubs, film & television, gay & lesbian, music, sports & fitness & theatre & dance. There is also a Directory with information on getting around the city & region as well as practical guidance on subjects such as attitude & etiquette, customs, disabled visitors, drugs, embassies & consulates, health, help-lines, insurance, internet facilities, media, money, opening hours, religion, smoking, universities, telephones, times & dates, tourist information points, visas & immigration & working in the city.

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A brutally mutilated body is discovered washed up in the bay of Havana. The body of Miguel Forcade Mier, head smashed in by a baseball bat, genitals cut off by a dull knife. Forcade, once an official in the Cuban government responsible for the confiscation of the belongings of the bourgeoisie fleeing the revolution, was an exile in Miami. Had he really returned to Havana just to visit his ailing father? Conde immerses himself in the dark history of expropriations of works of art, paintings that have vanished without trace, corrupt civil servants & old families that lost much, but not everything. Here is the disillusion of Padura`s generation, many of them veterans of the war in Angola, dealing with the catastrophe that followed the collapse of Russian aide in the 1990`s & now discovering the corruption of those that preceded them. Yet a eulogy of Cuba, its life of music, sex & the great friendships of those who elected to stay & fight for survival. ...

Havana in the City Guide Series from Lonely Planet, profiling in comprehensive detail the history, major sights, best places to eat, nightlife, accommodation & shopping possibilities of an extensive range of cities worldwide. Frank & informal in style, the guides are renowned for their appeal to independent travellers & are written & researched by local authors. Each guide is divided into 11 main sections
- Getting Started, Background, Neighbourhoods, Shopping, Eating, Drinking & Nightlife, The Arts, Sports & Activities, Gay & Lesbian, Sleeping & Day Trips & Excursions. The Background section details the history, arts, architecture, environment, media, fashion & government & politics of the city. An
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Marzena Pogorzaly made two trips to Havana. There, she walked the streets of Havana Vieja & El Centro, the old districts, trying to capture the melancholy beauty & decay of the city, & its inhabitants. Pogorzaly`s calmly gorgeous images are not directly concerned with politics, but as someone who grew up in pre-Solidarity Pol&, she combines mature scepticism about communist regimes with due respect for some of its achievements. As she explains in her introduction: ` Some of it was familiar. I was born, & grew up, behind the Iron Curtain. I immediately felt at home with the way The System worked, or rather the way it did not. But where the palette of my homeland was dull, drab & irredeemably monochrome, here I found a vivid treasure chest of visual epiphanies”` Her chief care is for people, either viewed directly or by means of the traces they leave: posters of Che Guevara, neglected chairs, rickety old American cars. Her photographs are entirely without sentimentality but rich in that tradition of humanism which sees the deeper qualities that unite us with strangers, as well as the surface differences that divide us. Her Cubans are not pathetic victims of a dictatorship but a handsome, vital, proud & resourceful people. ...

A fascinating, powerfully evocative account of four generations of Cuban women: Naty Revuelta, born in 1925, a socialite during the Batista era, who became intoxicated with Castro & his revolution; Naty`s mother, an unregenerate reactionary, & Naty`s two daughters, one of whom is the illegitimate & unacknowledged child of Castro. Each of the women`s lives is shaped by a part of the island`s terrible & poignant contemporary history, & together they weave a tapestry
- at once intimate & revelatory
- of Cuba in our century.

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Havana, 2003, fourteen years since Mario Conde retired from the police force & much has changed in Cuba. He now makes a living trading in antique books bought from families selling off their libraries in order to survive. In the house of Alcides de Montes de Oca, a rich Cuban who fled after the fall of Batista, Conde discovers an extraordinary book collection &, buried therein, a newspaper article about violeta del Rio, a beautiful bolero singer of the 1950`s, who disappeared mysteriously. Conde`s intuition sets him off on an investigation that leads him into a darker Cuba, now flooded with dollars, populated by pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers & other hunters of the night. But this novel also allows Padura to evoke the Havana of Batista, the city of a hundred night clubs where Marlon Brando & Josephine Baker listened to boleros, mambos & jazz. Probably Padura`s best book, ” Havana Fever” is many things: a suspenseful crime novel, a cruel family saga & an ode to literature & his beloved, ravaged isl&. ...

Twenty-four year old Lissette Delgado was beaten, raped, & then strangled with a towel. Marijuana is found in her apartment & her wardrobe is suspiciously beyond the means of a high school teacher. Lieutenant Conde is pressured by ”the highest authority” to conclude this investigation quickly when chance leads him into the arms of a beautiful redhead, a saxophone player who shares his love for jazz & Japanese fighting fish. This is a Havana of crumbling, grand buildings, secrets hidden behind faded doors & corruption. For an author living in Cuba, Padura is remarkably outspoken about the failings of Castro`s regime. Yet this is a eulogy of Cuba, its life of music, sex & the great friendships of those who elected to stay & fight for survival. ...