Cruise to Key West and Cuba July 2017

Warning: Long Post, too much cool stuff to share
 A few weeks ago I sailed with Royal Caribbean for  four days with stops in Key West and  Cuba. The first stop in Key West was for about 6 hours and we did a bar crawl, booked via Royal Caribbean.   My parents have become quite the regular cruisers these days and visited Key West a few months ago.  Since we still had a few more hours to spend, we opted to go in the Hemingway House.  Lets be real, I wanted to see the cats!  I have plenty of photos to share.

After boarding the ship in Key West, we made the short trip to Cuba to arrive early in the morning. The port is very small and limited in terms of what I was used to.  Before we disembarked another ship pulled in next to us.   We did attend the on ship information session the day before to get more information.  I had done a fair amount of research prior but it was helpful to get more detailed information about customs from the cruise director. We purchased our visas through the cruise ship for $75 and they were given to us when we checked in at the Tampa port.   A few panoramics from the boat and the customs area.

Since we had booked a tour with Royal Caribbean we exited the boat in groups to go through customs together.  We also exchanged our money in the customs building.   It is recommended to take Euros or CAD to exchange instead of USD.  I exchanged about $115 Euro, which was roughly $150 USD.  The CUC is about $1 USD currently, however, many things are very cheap, like the rum which you can purchase for about 4-15 CUC's.  Depending on how much you want to buy and how many taxi's you plan to take $150-$200 exchanged should be enough for one day.
We started our day with a four hour walking tour to  meet our "people to people" requirements while visiting Cuba. My goal was to document as much of the city as possible and get off the beaten path just a bit. 
The four plazas we visited:
Plaza de Armas
Plaza de San Francisco
Plaza Vieja
Plaza de la Catedral (Catedral de San Cristóbal)
After our walking tour was complete we continued to tour Old Havana on our own.  We had lunch at a restaurant/hotel.  The menu was in Spanish and English(see photo below) and the food was prepared beyond my expectations.  We were there on a Monday, so we didn't come across too many locals on the streets.  We did visit the market which was full of small booths, basically all selling the same items.  Somewhat comparable to a flea market in the US.  Luckily when the afternoon rainstorm came, we were in the market and able to stay dry.

* Lets get to some real talk... all those things you read online, is it what Cuba is really like?
*Bathrooms:Yes, you will more than likely need to pay to use a restroom, everyone I went in had some form of toilet paper, also don't flush the paper, put it in the trash can.
*Do you really need to take EURO or CAD?  Probably not, it might be a better exchange but that  much difference, unless you have easy access to change in the states.  When I exchanged my CUC they gave me USD in the exact amount I had left in CUC.
*No cell phone service:This is true, I never tried to find any WiFi, we had a map saved on our phone and the tour guide gave us a paper map
*Is it dirty? The plazas are very clean and appear to be maintained daily.  We did some exploring off main drag and the infrastructure is lacking, you can see some of the buildings in the photos above.
*I'm somewhat of a germ freak so I used a lot of hand sanitizer and wiped glasses before drinking out of them unless alcohol was involved.
*Drinking the water/use ice? Not recommended, we took a few bottles off the ship with us that lasted throughout the day.  If it consisted of alcohol we assumed that would kill anything.  If I was staying for  few days I would probably be more conscious of the ice, etc.
*Did I pay to take peoples pictures?  Yes, most people on the streets will expect you to give them some money to take their pictures.  In one of the plazas there were women dressed in traditional Cuban outfits selling dolls and posing for photos. I also gave the two kids 1 CUC each, hopefully they didn't go buy more cigarettes with it!
* Should you take things to donate?  Our cruise director said the ship would take any donations people had and they take them off the ship in bulk to be distributed.  I think they are trying to avoid locals always assuming tourists are coming with "gifts"   One of the staffers told us she would take some cans of dog food for the dogs that hang around.  I ended up giving out some hats I had to the kids I photographed and a lady came up to me in the market and asked for shampoo, but that was really the only interaction I had with a local asking for something.  

We ventured rather far away from the port by foot and decided to hail a classic car back to the ship.  My brother flagged one down, somehow we managed to get a driver who didn't speak Spanish or English.... go figure!Once we were able to show him where we wanted to go, he agreed on $5CUC.  I think that was a little under priced based on our earlier ride in a regular car and shorter distance.  Check out the our ride below

My Two Cents on Cruising
I work in a customer service job that can be stressful.  I like to go on a vacation where I dont have to do a lot of thinking about where to eat, what to do, etc. I dont often go on "real" vacations aka trips that dont involve horse racing. Cruises can be customized to what you want and almost unlimited food.   We had great staff on the Empress of the Seas throughout the four days.  While the boat isn't the newest or fanciest in their fleet, it was pretty clean and we didn't have any major issues.  We slept 4 people in our room, that was a bit tight and ask my brother about using the ladder to get in the top bunk :) 
  Sasha from shore excursions department was on our bar crawl in Key West.  She gave us a few tips for our trip to Cuba, added bonus she has  been on ever excursion the ship offers.
Our dining room  servers, Milton and Silva, were fantastic, I think my mom would have taken them back to Florida with her!  Interacting with the staff makes the experience even better in my opinion.
 After touring Key West and Havana, I need to read Hemingway's books, I should be able to put a visual to the places he actually wrote the books in.  I am already trying to figure out how I can get back to Cuba soon!

All photos/video were taken with:
Canon 70D, 10-18mm lens or Samsung  Galaxy S7

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