Letters from Cuba: Havana in the Footsteps of Ernest Hemingway…

My dear travelers and lovers of unusual trips, welcome to the new series of travelogues on the Mr.M blog. The month of June will be dedicated to an unusual island country in the Caribbean, a country known for tobacco and rum – Cuba. At the very beginning of this second travelogue about Cuba, I would like to thank the travel agency Disko Travel, better known as Disko Travel Buddies, which is more than a travel agency, it is a real traveling family that provides an incredible experience. This is my first time cooperating with a travel agency from our area and I must admit that it was an unusual experience. With their help, travelogues from Cuba and fashion stories were created that you will have the opportunity to read this June and July, and I sincerely hope that you will enjoy the new adventure.

Do you want a trip that you will remember for a lifetime? Check out Disco Travel arrangements for far-flung destinations and choose your dream adventure, just don’t forget your camera and phone to capture unforgettable moments from Zanzibar, Bali, Thailand, Cuba and other destinations that Disco Travel Buddies can take you to.

In the previous travelogue about Havana, you had the opportunity to get to know Havana and learn some basic information about the capital of this interesting island country in the Caribbean. Today’s travelogue will be dedicated to Havana from the point of view of the famous Nobel laureate – American writer and journalist Ernest Hemingway.

His economical and understated style—which included his iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and public image earned him the admiration of later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and in 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He published seven novels, six collections of short stories and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four collections of short stories and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.

With an unblemished reputation for serving delicious cocktails, El Floridita was already popular in Cuba, but it was Hemingway who eventually catapulted the bar to astronomical status. The story goes that after Hemingway first came across El Floridita, he was mesmerized by the daiquiri (cocktail) and the bar’s charming atmosphere. In fact, as his love affair with El Floridita blossomed, it became more about her setting than the daiquiri.

It was the wild heidei of famed Havana, and while the American mobs ruled much of the city, El Floridita was still largely run by the self-made Constant – who lived for his work. He didn’t need mob influence to attract customers, and when word got out that this was Hemingway’s favorite haunt, the entire Hollywood elite from Clark Gable, Ava Gardner to John Wayne followed, it wasn’t a matter of who came to El Floridita, but the second question was asked, who has not yet visited this cocktail bar in the heart of Havana?

In early 1939, Hemingway crossed over to Cuba in his boat to live at the Ambos Mundos Hotel in Havana. This was the separation phase of a slow and painful separation from Pauline, which began when Hemingway met Martha Gellhorn. Marta soon joined him in Cuba and they rented “Finca Vigia” (“Viewing Farm”), a 15-acre property just outside of Havana. Pauline and the children left Hemingway that summer, after the family reunited during a visit to Wyoming, when his divorce from Pauline was finalized, he and Martha were married on November 20, 1940, in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Hemingway moved his primary summer residence to Ketchum, Idaho, just outside the newly built Sun Valley Resort, and moved his winter residence to Cuba. He was disgusted when a Parisian friend allowed his cats to eat off the table, but he fell in love with cats in Cuba and kept dozens of them on the property. The descendants of his cats live in his home in Key West. Gellhorn inspired him to write his most famous novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, which he began in March 1939 and finished in July 1940. His pattern was to move around while working on the manuscript, and he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls in Cuba, Wyoming, and the Valley of the Sun. It became a Book of the Month Club selection, sold half a million copies within months, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and, in Myers’ words, “triumphantly re-established Hemingway’s literary reputation.”

Hemingway once stated that he “was out of work as a writer” from 1942 to 1945 while in Cuba. The following year, in 1946, he married Mary, who five months later had an ectopic pregnancy. The Hemingway family suffered a series of accidents and health problems in the years after the war: in a car accident in 1945, he “broke his knee” and suffered another “deep gash on his forehead”; Mary first broke her right ankle and then her left ankle in successive skiing accidents. A car accident in 1947 left Patrick with a gash on his head and left him gravely ill.

In the following year, 1948, Hemingway and Mary traveled to Europe, staying in Venice for several months. While there, Hemingway fell in love with the then 19-year-old Adriana Ivancic. The Platonic love affair inspired the novel “Across the River and into the Forest”, written in Cuba during the conflict with Mary, and published in 1950 with negative reviews. The following year, enraged by the critical reception of “Across the River and Into the Woods,” he wrote a draft of “The Old Man and the Sea” in eight weeks, saying it was the best he could write in his entire life. The Old Man and the Sea became Book of the Month, made Hemingway an international celebrity, and won the Pulitzer Prize in May 1953, a month before he left for his second trip to Africa.

In January 1954, while in Africa, Hemingway was nearly fatally injured in two consecutive plane crashes. He chartered a sightseeing flight to the Belgian Congo as a Christmas present for Mary. On their way to photograph the Murchison Falls from the air, the plane hit an abandoned pole and “landed in heavy brush”. Hemingway’s injuries included a head wound, while Mary suffered two broken ribs. The next day, trying to get medical help to Entebbe, they boarded another plane that exploded on takeoff, and Hemingway suffered burns and another concussion, this one severe enough to cause a cerebral fluid leak. They eventually arrived in Entebbe to find reporters covering the story of Hemingway’s death. He notified the press and spent the next few weeks recuperating and reading his mistaken obituaries.

Despite his injuries, Hemingway accompanied Patrick and his wife on a planned fishing expedition in February, but his pain made him irritable and difficult to get along with. When the fire broke out, he was injured again, suffering second-degree burns on his legs, front of his torso, lips, left hand and right forearm. Months later in Venice, Mary reported to friends the full extent of Hemingway’s injuries: two ruptured discs, a ruptured kidney and liver, a dislocated shoulder, and a fractured skull. The accidents may have accelerated the physical deterioration that was to follow. After the plane crash, Hemingway, who had been “a poorly controlled alcoholic for most of his life, drank more than usual to combat pain from his injuries.”

In October 1954, Hemingway received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He modestly told reporters that Carl Sandburg, Isaac Dinesen and Bernard Berenson deserved the award, but he gladly accepted the prize money. Mellow says that Hemingway “craved the Nobel Prize,” but when he received it, months after his plane crashes and the resulting worldwide press coverage, “there must have been a lingering suspicion in Hemingway’s mind that his obituaries played a role in the academy’s decisions .” Having suffered from misfortunes in Africa, he decided not to travel to Stockholm. Instead, he sent a speech to be read, defining the writer’s life:

“Writing is, at best, a lonely life. Writers’ organizations alleviate a writer’s loneliness, but I doubt whether they improve his writing. He grows in public as he gets rid of his loneliness and often his work gets worse. Because he does his job alone, and if he’s a good enough writer he has to face eternity, or the lack of it, every day.”

Hemingway’s Nobel Prize award speech

From late 1955 to early 1956, Hemingway was bedridden. He was told to stop drinking to ease the liver damage, advice he initially followed but then ignored. In October 1956, he returned to Europe and met the Basque writer Pio Baroja, who was seriously ill and died weeks later. During the trip, Hemingway became ill again and was treated for “high blood pressure, liver disease, and arteriosclerosis.”

In November 1956, while staying in Paris, he remembered the trunks that he kept in the Ritz Hotel in 1928 and never returned them. After retrieving and opening the trunks, Hemingway discovered they were full of notebooks and writings from his Paris years. Excited by the discovery, when he returned to Cuba in early 1957, he began to shape the restored work into his memoirs, “The Moving Holiday.” By 1959, a period of intense activity had ended: the Mobile Holiday (planned to be published the following year) had ended; brought True at First Light to 200,000 words; added chapters to the Garden of Eden; and worked on the Islands in the Stream. The last three were stored in a safe in Havana while he focused on the finishing touches to A Moveable Feast. Author Michael Reynolds claims that during this period Hemingway fell into depression, from which he could not recover.

Finca Vigia became overcrowded with guests and tourists as Hemingway, who had begun to grow dissatisfied with life there, considered moving permanently to Idaho. Later in 1959, he bought a house overlooking the Big Wood River outside of Ketchum and left Cuba—although he apparently remained on good terms with the Castro government, telling The New York Times that he was “delighted” by Castro’s ouster of Batista. He was in Cuba in November 1959, between his return from Pamplona and a trip west to Idaho, and the following year on his 61st birthday, however, that year he and Mary decided to leave after hearing news that Castro wanted to nationalizes property owned by Americans and other foreign nationals. On July 25, 1960, the Hemingways left Cuba for the last time, leaving the art and manuscripts in a Havana bank vault. After the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, Finca Vigia was expropriated by the Cuban government, along with Hemingway’s collection of “four to six thousand books.” President Kennedy arranged for Mary Hemingway to travel to Cuba where she met Fidel Castro and received papers and a picture of her husband in exchange for donating the Finca Vigia to Cuba.

If you want to experience Havana in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, there is a special tour that you should take advantage of and see some of the buildings that this famous Nobel laureate loved. Hotel “Ambos Mundos” is located in the old town of Havana. Hotel room 511 was Hemingway’s first accommodation in Havana. From 1932 to 1939, he was a frequent guest at this hotel. He enthusiastically wrote to his friend John D. Passos (also a writer): “At this hotel you can get a good, clean room with private bath overlooking the harbor and the cathedral – you can see the whole entrance to the harbor and the sea for $2.00 – 2 .50 for two people.” For Hemingway, the hotel was “a very good place to write,” as he himself said. In his hotel room, he finished the book “Afternoon of Death” (1932) and began the novels “The Green Hills of Africa” (1935) and “To Have and Not to Hide” (1937). Hotel room 511 is now a small museum. You can visit it every day from 9 am to 5 pm. The ticket costs 2 dollars.

Havana is a city that cannot be easily described, you have to experience it to understand the essence and way of life in Cuba. Havana is not only made up of old-timers, tompus and rum, but smiling people who will welcome you with open hearts and open arms because they really want to show you their country.

Havana has long been considered one of the most romantic cities in the world. Cubans and foreigners (and sometimes together) are overcome by the beauty, charm and intimacy of the city and people, making Havana the place where millions of couples have fallen in love with each other. Sunsets on the Malecón, couples embracing with crashing waves, passing traffic and the sun setting in the distance. The shops and cobbled streets of Old Havana, moving in a beautiful European setting, the charm of the Old Town is a lover’s paradise. Locals don’t just dance, they walk, talk and greet with rhythm, attitude and love. From the bars and households you can hear the piercing and ecstatic sounds of salsa, reggaeton and pop, where you can see almost everyone doing some head movements, smiling and often dancing their hips to the rhythm.

The Museum of the Revolution is located in the Old Havana section of Havana, Cuba, in the presidential palace of all Cuban presidents from Mario García Menocal to Fulgencio Batista. The building became the Museum of the Revolution in the years following the Cuban Revolution. The palace building was attacked by the Revolucionario 13 de Marzo (activist group) in 1957.

The presidential palace was designed by the Cuban architect Rodolfo Maruri and the Belgian architect Paul Belau, who also designed the Centro Gallego, today the Gran Teatro de La Habana. The presidential palace was opened in 1920 by President Mario García Menocal. It remained the Presidential Palace until the Cuban Revolution in 1959.

My dear travelers, we have come to the end of this second special travelogue in the series of travelogues about Cuba where we had the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of this unusual country in the Caribbean. Today’s travelogue would not have been possible without the selfless help of the tourist agency Disko Travel in cooperation with local partners who allowed me to feel the spirit and beauty of Cuban culture and tradition. Of course, as always, I tried my best to convey to you my impressions of this unusual experience from Cuba.

A person is rich in soul if he has managed to explore the world and I am glad that I always manage to find partners of my projects who help me to discover new and unusual destinations in a completely different way.

I am honored to have the opportunity to cooperate with many companies and businessmen in the tourism sector and I would like to thank the Disko Travel travel agency once again for this incredible adventure and for allowing me to experience the beauty of this unusual Cuban culture in a completely different way.

How did you like my story about Cuba and the presentation of the capital of Havana, which adorns the heart of this unusual country in the Caribbean? Have you had a chance to visit Cuba so far?

If you have any question, comment, suggestion or message for me you can write me below in the comments. Of course, as always, you can contact me via email or social networks, all addresses can be found on the CONTACT page. See you at the same place in a few days, with some new story!

In the following stories from Cuba, we will discover some other interesting sights that you should visit if your journey leads you to this far away Caribbean country!

With Love From Havana,

Mr.M

This post is sponsored by Disko Travel and Air France airline as well as other local partners. This post is my personal and honest review of the destination experience.