Hello, Havana! Nicole721's Full PICTORIAL Review of the Paradise 4-Day to Cuba

[Kingisacruiser]

I am in!!! Your reviews are and pictures are great. I always feel like I am right there when I read your reviews. You have a wonderful gift for writing.

[oncruisecontrol]

Eventually, we took refuge in the Normandie Lounge to watch Cruise Director Jaime’s Fun Aboard Fun Ashore presentation. This was my…third…I think?...cruise with Jaime Dee. She is, hands down, one of the best in the Carnival portfolio. She’s hilarious, she has energy that I couldn’t match even if I downed four Americanos and she’s…she’s just good peeps. When we were on the Dream back in 2011, she was the Assistant Cruise Director and she was really fantastic in helping us get around with grandma (who was in a wheelchair at that point) and making sure that we were able to get on, off and around the ship with her. Mom has never forgotten it and she is still to this day my Mom’s favorite Cruise Director. So much so that while I was watching her presentation on Havana, my mom was writing on her Facebook wall.

 

 

And speaking of that presentation, it was super helpful and insightful. Cruising to Cuba is an involved process with many conditions, so it was helpful to have it all laid out for us. Oh, and we got a cute little pin out of it, too!

 

 

 

Here’s the skinny on what we learned about Cuba:

 

1. Havana is proverbially frozen in time. There are no Starbucks or 7-11’s, and the port would be different than anything we’ve experienced anywhere else in the Caribbean (so all you Diamonds International fanatics out there are going to be disappointed – there’s no DI, no Del Sol and very limited shopping).

2. Cuba is the birthplace of two of my favorite boozy libations: the daiquiri and the mojito.

3. Broad tourism from the US to Cuba just opened up within the past few years and the Cuban tourism industry hasn’t caught up yet, which means traveling there right now is still a very unique, very raw experience.

4. You’ll need to BYOTP (that’s bring your own toilet paper) and some CUC’s, too – many restrooms require a small fee

5. Tipping is expected for all services rendered. The average salary in Cuba is $40 a month and those tips go a long way.

6. When there are signs prohibiting photography, your camera best not be out (especially in the cruise terminal)

7. US credit cards are not accepted in Cuba, and it’s rare for USD to be accepted. The Cuban currency (CUC) is equivalent to one dollar, but when you exchange US dollars for CUC’s, you’ll face a 10% embargo fee and a 3% exchange fee, so for every $100 you exchange, you’ll get 87 CUC back

This is great-to-know info. Thanks.

[riclop]

Thanks for the review.

[dancergrl608]

Loving this so far!! We're on the Paradise in August for the 8 day Cuba sailing. Also what camera did you use for your pictures?

 

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[pghsteelerfan]

Great to see another review in process, I love your reviews - you have a great writing style and include so many beautiful pictures!!! I'd love to go on a cruise that went to Cuba, so I am not only looking forward to reading and seeing your beautiful pictures, but looking forward to your experience in Cuba as well. In just that one section alone, you covered things I would not have been aware of, so thank you. Looking forward to the rest!

[bluewater5]

Great review and pics

[3cruisers1978]

Looking forward to more.....We are on the Paradise in 2 weeks!!

 

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[Keys2Heaven]

and De Chevre pizza.

 

Man, do I miss this! Had that pizza for the first time on the Destiny back in 2006....wow.

[jpm1973]

Always great reading your reviews, Nicole! And your pictures make my camera jealous. :)

 

 

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[carnivaladdix120]

Enjoying your review!!

[Nicole721]

GREAT start to your review! Looking forward to your Cuba photos. We will be on the Paradise next month after her extensive dry dock. :cool:

 

Thank you!!

 

 

This is a fantastic trip report and your pictures are great. Looking forward to the rest!

 

Hope you enjoy the rest! :)

[Nicole721]

I absolutely LOVE the conditions of the visas! This is what travelling should be about! Visiting Cuba is a dream vacay for us and is definitely on our bucket list. I’d like to go for my 50th birthday. Hopefully travel to Cuba will still be available then!

 

Agreed!

 

 

I was just going to let you know there's a Paradise review in the works!

Nicole, I've always loved reading your reviews. Have never been on Paradise, but I am also reliving some of the "older" ships in the fleet thru your pictures. Thanks for sharing!

 

Thanks for reading along! :)

[Nicole721]

enjoying your review; great photos

 

Thank you!

 

Looking forward to the rest! Great photos, too.

 

Thanks!

[Nicole721]

This thread is great.

 

Wonderful narrative and photos.

 

Keith

 

Thanks, Keith!

 

 

Glad to see a review of both the Paradise and Cuba! I just booked the hubby and I on a 5 day Cuba (Key West/Havana) cruise on the Paradise. Definitely a bucket list destination for us. Only bad thing is we have to wait until next April!

 

Hope you enjoy it as much as we did! :)

[Nicole721]

Enjoying your review, I’ll be joining you on Horizon.

 

 

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See you onboard! :D

 

 

I'm looking forward to another of your wonderful reviews, Nicole. Great start. :)

Heather

 

Thanks for reading along, Heather!

[Nicole721]

I am in!!! Your reviews are and pictures are great. I always feel like I am right there when I read your reviews. You have a wonderful gift for writing.

 

That's very kind of you to say! Thank you!

 

 

This is great-to-know info. Thanks.

 

Glad it was helpful! One other thing to note: keep a detailed account of everything you do and keep receipts of everything. I had applied for Global Entry ahead of our trip to Barcelona for the Horizon and had my in person interview today, and my acceptance is on hold pending their review of my visa compliance for this trip. By law, you are supposed to keep a detailed account for five years after your trip. Hopefully, the details I provided were enough, but definitely a reminder to keep those itineraries, receipts, etc!

[Nicole721]

Thanks for the review.

 

Thanks for reading along!

 

Loving this so far!! We're on the Paradise in August for the 8 day Cuba sailing. Also what camera did you use for your pictures?

 

Sent from my SM-G950U using Forums mobile app

 

Thank you! Most of these are from a Nikon D7000, but some of them are from my iPhone :)

[Nicole721]

Great to see another review in process, I love your reviews - you have a great writing style and include so many beautiful pictures!!! I'd love to go on a cruise that went to Cuba, so I am not only looking forward to reading and seeing your beautiful pictures, but looking forward to your experience in Cuba as well. In just that one section alone, you covered things I would not have been aware of, so thank you. Looking forward to the rest!

 

These reviews are definitely a labor of love, but they're so much fun to write and even more fun to share with all of you!

 

 

Great review and pics

 

Thank you!

[Nicole721]

Looking forward to more.....We are on the Paradise in 2 weeks!!

 

Sent from my SM-G955U using Forums mobile app

 

How exciting! Hope you have a wonderful cruise! :)

 

 

Man, do I miss this! Had that pizza for the first time on the Destiny back in 2006....wow.

 

A-freaking-men! I like the new style pizza far more than the old style pizza, but that De Chevre is A+ delicious. Tasted every bit as good as I remembered!

[Nicole721]

Always great reading your reviews, Nicole! And your pictures make my camera jealous. :)

 

 

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Haha! Thank you!!!

 

 

Enjoying your review!!

 

Glad you like it! :D

[Nicole721]

Day 3: Havana

 

Back last spring when we were about to visit Russia, I was terrified. I wasn’t sure how anything could possibly prepare me to travel to a place unlike anywhere I’d ever been before. I had the same sense of anxiety tinged excitement for Havana.

 

None of my friends had been to Havana. Most people in my immediate age group haven’t, either – the restrictions that complicated travel between the US and Cuba have only recently lifted in the past few years, the first time in our lifetimes. I did some research the best I could, but there aren’t a ton of comprehensive reviews about cruising to Havana and really, there aren’t a ton of travel guides or blogs, either, since tourism in it’s current incarnation is such a new industry there.

 

Something I did read was that the view pulling into Havana was amazing and beautiful and not to be missed. I kept seeing 6:00 am on the posts I could find about Havana as a port of call, but I had no desire to be up that early in the morning if I did not absolutely have to be. So I was up at 7:30 am, and we were still long at sea.

 

The Carnival Paradise was scheduled to dock in Havana just after 11:00 am, but we later found out that we’d be delayed an hour and a half or so, as rough currents overnight slowed our travels from Tampa and we were still a ways away. But that was okay: I’ve done the whole morning sea day/afternoon port day thing before. It’s actually one of my favorite kinds of cruise days. So we started with a leisurely breakfast up on the Lido deck. I wasn’t sure if this cruise wasn’t all that full, or if the Paradise had a better passenger to space ratio, but we faced no lines and had no issues finding tables during the AM breakfast hours.

 

 

After breakfast, we headed downstairs to the United States Bar for a few rounds of trivia. The Paradise version of General Knowledge Trivia may have been the most difficult trivia session I’ve ever played at sea – I think the win went to someone who scored an 11 out of 23 possible points.

 

[Nicole721]

I gave up on trivia (musical theater trivia or bust, y’all) and we headed outside to the promenade to spend some time watching the water as we inched towards Cuba. Jaime would come over the PA system to announce our progress and what we’d see on each side of the ship (the city, the Malecón where the second Fast and the Furious movie was filmed and the pilot boat on the starboard side and the El Morro Fortress on the port side). The outer decks crowded as everyone tried to cop a view but we had some primo real estate up on the deck above the bridge. We even spotted some dolphins as we sailed into the channel, the shoreline transforming from dark shadows to a skyline in front of us. And can we just take a sec to talk about the fact that Havana has a skyline? I went on a yacht ride once in Sausalito around the San Francisco Bay, and watching the Havana skyline take shape almost reminded me of the San Francisco skyline from Sausalito.

 

 

 

 

[Nicole721]

We didn’t stay the entire time – we left just after we fully passed the fort to leave ourselves with enough time to grab lunch and stop at the room before we had to meet our tour at the Normandie Lounge.

 

 

Even though the ship was delayed, Carnival didn’t mention anything about tours being delayed. Our tour had a meeting time of 1:15 pm for a 1:45 pm departure, but our sticker number wasn’t even called until well after 2:30 pm. I used the extra time to get my things in the order I’d need them: Sail and Sign card, passport, visa (filled out completely and accurately on both sides) and cash to exchange for CUC’s (the currency of Cuba).

 

 

Passing through immigration was almost exactly like it was in Russia. We waited in a long line, our passports and visa’s were examined and stamped (and at some point, we passed through a health inspection where our temperatures were checked by some measure that we couldn’t figure out – or so we were told), we passed through a security check which ended right at the currency exchange, where we were asked to exchange in increments of $50. Exchanging dollars for CUC’s will result in a 10% embargo tax and a 3% exchange tax, so for $100, you get back 87 CUC. Some people will circumvent this by bringing Euros or Canadian dollars, but getting those currencies in the US generally comes at a less than favorable exchange rate (and some level of hassle) so I stuck with exchanging US dollars. We lucked out in finding ourselves in the shortest lines at every stop and we just kept passing right through.

 

[Nicole721]

We met up with our tour on the ground level of the cruise terminal and were the first ones there. We had booked the Tour of Havana in an American Classic tour and met up with the three guides assigned to our group of 34. One guide fell off as she got called back for another tour and the other two explained to us that there was not so great news: one, because we were so late, our time in the cars would be cut short. We had assumed that since we were in Havana overnight, the tour would just be extended but it seemed that was not the case. The second piece of bad news was that even though the images for our tour featured convertibles, our tour actually only had hard top cars. I felt there was some level of bait and switch there (wholly on Carnival’s level) for misrepresenting the tour, not being more proactive in getting us off the ship given we had been docked and cleared long before our tour meeting time and pushing communication of all of this to tour guides who had no part in these things, but I decided to push it out of my mind because I was in Cuba, this was a unique opportunity and I only had a limited amount of time here that I did not plan on wasting on being angry at circumstances beyond my control.

 

Our tour began on a motor coach that drove us to a parking lot where we could choose whatever cars we wanted. I was first off the bus and beelined to a beautiful blue car with white seats covered in vinyl and it was a lucky pick: the lead driver, Enrique, was the owner, and he spoke great English (most of the drivers, we were told, did not speak any English). We knew each car wouldn’t have a tour guide from the tour description, but I thought they would, like, walkie talkie in or something. It turned out they were going to rotate through at each stop, but given that there were only three stops and two guides, they would not make it into every car.

 

 

 

[Nicole721]

One of the guides started in our car and we started the drive to our first stop, the Colon Cemetery. On our way there, the guide walked us through some brief facts about the island, focused largely on the religious landscape. One thing she did mention, though, was the frustration of the Cuban people over how the island was portrayed in the wake of Hurricane Irma. They felt that the US news stations were reporting that the island was in far worse shape than it was and, having seen some of the footage, I totally understood where she was coming from. The images we saw on the news was of flooded streets, hearing that there was a ton of damage and that no one knew it was coming because the island is so isolated from the media. The reality is the brunt of Irma was further east on the island and if it wasn’t all over the news, we would have never known a hurricane blew through: not so much as a palm tree was out of place.