It has what realtors might call a "rough walk-up". The lobby wasn't much better, and the elevator was positively scary, having been there since the 50s or before. However, once you step out onto the 4th floor, you get a whole different picture.
And, the view from that balcony overlooking the Malacón boardwalk along the harbor, well, that alone was worth a fortune!
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| One of five forts built to protect the Havana harbor from pirates, back in the day. Now a night club! |
This is where my tour-mates and I began each of our days with coffee or tea in hand, and ended them, rehashing the days events, before heading off to bed.
When asked why there was such disparity between the interiors and the crumbling facades of most buildings we saw, our guide Mandy explained that , although every person in Cuba owns a home, more often than not it's a unit in a large building full of those units -- what we would call a condo. Individuals may own the units, but the government owns the buildings themselves, and all the land as well. So, while the individuals might fix up their own little space, it's up to the government to fix up the exteriors, and it just doesn't have the money to repair thousands of disintegrating buildings. So, it uses what funds it has on the buildings downtown, where all the tourists alight from their luxury cruise ships, while the rest end up like this crumbling beauty next door to our Bed and Breakfast.
My first thought was just to store art supplies in it, but this morning I had a sudden brain fart. Now I'm thinking it would make an awesome case for a Cuban travel journal -- an altered book journal made from the "Cuban Foodie Novel" I ordered and read when I first heard where we were going.
Whadya think?
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