Guides
Havana in 48 hours
Two days is not enough for Havana, but it is enough to see it properly if you stop trying to see all of it.
Most 48-hour plans for Havana fail the same way: they try to cover Habana Vieja, Centro, Vedado and Miramar, and end up as a series of taxi rides between photographs. The city rewards the opposite approach. Pick two districts, walk them properly, and let the third stay on the list for next time.
Day one: Habana Vieja and the seawall
Start early in the old town, before the cruise groups reach the plazas. The four main squares, Plaza de Armas, Plaza Vieja, Plaza de San Francisco and the cathedral square, sit within fifteen minutes of each other, and the streets between them are more interesting than the squares themselves. Give it three hours and do not plan the route too tightly.
Break in the middle of the day. The heat between one and three is not something to push through, and the city knows it.
Late afternoon belongs to the Malecón. Walk west from the old town along the seawall as the light drops. It is five kilometres to the Hotel Nacional if you want the full stretch, and roughly half that to the point where Centro Habana gives way to Vedado, a good place to stop, turn round, and watch the spray come over the wall.
Day two: Vedado and the other side of the city
Vedado is the twentieth-century city: wider streets, trees, 1950s towers and the university. It is less photographed than the old town and considerably easier to spend a day in. La Rampa runs down to the sea and gives you the spine of it.
The Necrópolis de Colón is worth an hour even if cemeteries are not usually your thing: it is enormous, and it explains a great deal about the city that built it. The Plaza de la Revolución is close by and takes about fifteen minutes, which is the right amount of time for it.
If music is the reason you came, this is where to spend the evening. Vedado holds the concentration of live rooms, and things start considerably later than visitors expect. Nothing worth hearing begins before ten.
Where to base yourself
Staying in Habana Vieja puts you inside the postcard and inside the crowds. Staying in Vedado gives you a quieter base with better food and a fifteen-minute ride into the old town. For two nights, either works; for longer, Vedado tends to wear better.
We hold contracted rooms in both districts, the Plaza and the Deauville on the old-town side, the Nacional, Capri, Vedado and Saint John in Vedado itself, so it is worth deciding which half of the city you want to wake up in before choosing the hotel.
