Exactly six years ago today, I was in the magical city of Havana. Another dream of mine came true.

 All the books I had read , all the films that I had seen and many of the heroes that I admire (Che, Ernest, Fidel) had loved this place; now it was my turn.

 For many Greeks, Cuba is an exotic destination, so very often they still ask me "how is it in Cuba?" The short answer is "like filming a documentary."

 So exotic before my eyes at the time I was there and even more exotic now, as a memory inside my head.

Havana is a dream city. Extreme contrasts, countless beauties and fragments of frozen time in every corner. Old (really old) American cars, colonial buildings, forts, skyscrapers, fabulous hotels (Nacional de Cuba, Habana Riviera, Capri, Inglattera and Hotel Ambos Mundos) and legendary bars (La Bodeguita del Medio and El Floridita); there is something for everyone here.

HOTELS AND BARS

The historic Nacional de Cuba Hotel opened its doors on 1930. Among its famous guests over all these years are Gabriel García Márquez, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Leonardo DiCaprio,Yuri Gagarin, Jean-Paul Sartre and  Simone de Beauvoir, just to name a few.  Some other interesting facts:

-Jean-Paul Sartre and  Simone de Beauvoir visited Cuba in 1960 staying in the hotel. The couple had an interview with Che Guevara. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote 'Sartre visits Cuba' which was published in Hanava in 1961, about his experiences in revolutionary Cuba. The hotel has since named the room he stayed in after him.

-In December 1946 the hotel hosted the Havana Conference, an infamous mob summit run by Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky and attended by Santo Trafficante, Jr., Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia, Vito Genovese and many others. Francis Ford Coppola memorably dramatised the conference in his film The Godfather Part II.

-There is a museum in the hotel's gardens dedicated to its role in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when anti-aircraft guns were set up on the site of the Santa Clara Battery and an extensive series of tunnels were built under the property, which are now open to the public on guided tours.

 Ernest Hemingway spent almost 20 years living in Cuba, from 1939 to 1960. Here he wrote seven books, with 'The Old Man and the Sea' (1953) being the most famous and the one that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to their awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954.

 Another must-see in Havana, is definitely the world known El Floridita.It opened in 1817 and almost 100 years later, in 1914, the Catalan immigrant Constantino (Constante) Ribalaigua Vert started working in the bar as cantinero (bartender).He became the owner in 1918 and he is credited for inventing the frozen daiquiri in the early 1930s, a drink that became linked to the fame of the place, whose motto is now "la cuna del daiquiri" (the cradle of the daiquiri). The bar became a school of highly skilled cantineros (bartenders), specialised in cocktails prepared with fresh fruit juices and rum, whose traditions are still preserved by the disciples of Constante.The Nobel Prize-winning American writer Ernest Hemingway frequented the bar, which is at the end of Calle Obispo (Bishop Street), a short walk from the Hotel Ambos Mundos, where Hemingway maintained a room from 1932-1939. Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos and Graham Greene (the British novelist who wrote Our Man in Havana), were also frequent customers here.

La Bodeguita del Medio is a typical restaurant-bar of Havana (Cuba). It is a famous tourist destination, because of the personalities which have patronized it: Salvador Allende, the poet Pablo Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gabriela Mistral, Agustín Lara, Nat King Cole, Nicolás Guillén, Julio Cortázar, Joan Manuel Serrat, Ernest Hemingway, his granddaughter Margaux Hemingway, the artist Josignacio and many others. La Bodeguita lays claim to being the birthplace of the Mojito cocktail, prepared in the bar since its opening in 1942 (although this is disputed).

COLÓN CEMETERY

Maybe the strangest attraction of the city is the huge Colón Cemetery.Currently, the cemetery is holding over 800,000 graves. Almost a million interments have taken place there.Among the most notable interments which have taken place there is that of  José Raúl Casablanca (1888 – 1942), one of my favourite chess players.

 One of the most famous spots in the cemetery is the sacred memorial for “Amelia and her baby”. Amelia died of preeclampsia in 1901 and she was buried together with her baby. Cuban believers come and offer their prayers for safe pregnancies and return with flowers to thank her for a safe birth.

MALECÓN

Of course, Havana is where you can walk on Malecón. Perhaps one of the most famous streets in the world. A street with a unique personality.

PEOPLE

People are poor, but warm and smiling. They are probably the main reason to visit Havana.Beautiful, gentle, shiny, happy people.

BUILDINGS

Architecture for your eyes. Modern structures and buildings that barely stand. Havana's buildings are awesome.

Some of them are crumbling, others almost deserted, but all of them are wonderful.

At the time I went there, Fidel was still alive and he was going to be head of Communist Party central committee for one more month.(On April 19, 2011, Castro resigned from the Communist Party central committee, thus stepping down as party leader. His brother Raúl was selected as his successor)You could see excerpts from his famous speeches and photos of him and Che everywhere.

 It was one of the most unique trips I have ever made to date. Until the next one. 

I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT MY FIRST AND FOREMOST INTEREST IS MY COUNTRY | FIDEL CASTRO 

(Source for most of the facts : Wikipedia)