Cuba Art Tour
Explore Havana, Cienfuegos and Trinidad and visit the studios of Cuba's cutting edge artists. This escorted tour can be added on to your holiday in Cuba.
CUBA ART TOUR - Explore Havana, Cienfuegos and Trinidad and visit the studios of Cuba's cutting edge artists. This escorted tour can be added on to your holiday in Cuba.
This guided tour is for art buffs who want to meet famous and up and coming Cuban artists. We take you inside the studios of famous and emerging Cuban Artists and we meet art critics who understand the Cuban Art scene. Works of art can be purchased direct from all the artists and photographers that we visit in the program and they can be legally taken to the USA or Europe. There will also be lectures about life in Cuba today. This tour can be tailor made and extended. Please contact mike@cubawelcome.com
Day 1. – Arrive Havana airport, Cuba
- Personal agency assistance at Havana Airport
- Transfer by micro bus to hotel, changing money enroute at a Cuban bank
- Welcome cocktail
- Check in for four nights B&B in the 4 star Hotel Nacional de Cuba, Havana’s Grande Dame hotel built in 1930 in the style of the Breakers hotel in Florida. Also, one can stay at the 5 star Hotel Parque Central or the lovely Hotel Saratoga in old Havana
- Lecture by a Cuban university professor of Economics – question time included
- Cocktails in the ‘Hall of Fame’ bar
- Lunch in the ranch style restaurant in the hotel garden
- Free afternoon
- Dinner at Cafe Laurent paladar nearby
- After dinner, if you still have energy, we recommend El Gato Tuerto for good Cuban Music and dancing, a stone’s throw from the hotel.
Day 2. - Havana
- Breakfast in the hotel.
- 9.00am transfer to Old Havana, for a city tour of old Havana, a Unesco World Heritage site since 1982. No where in Latin America will you find more handsome buildings from the Spanish colonial era.
- Visit a cigar factory and see the centuries old techniques and skills that made Cuba so famous in the tobacco industry.
- We continue with a walking tour of the old city including Capitolio building, a very slightly larger but otherwise identical version of the Washington Capito. We continue down Paseo Marti stopping at the lovely square of Central Park, in one corner of which we note the astonishing neo-rococo 19th century Grand Theatre of Habana. Then onto the Cathedral Square with its cathedral, the old city’s proudest edifice with its eclectic baroque stile and enchanted history, followed by the Museum of Colonial Art, the square’s oldest building. Other notable buildings include the “El Palacio del Marques de Arcos” (1746), the 17th century priest house, the “Casa del Obispo” and the 18th century “Colegio de San Ambrosio”, a former seminary which now has an Islamic art museum, the Alejo Carpentier Museum in the house that is said to have inspired his historic novel “El Siglo de las Luces” and next to it “La Bodeguita del Medio” allegedly one of Hemingway’s favorite bars where we stop for a Mojito.
- Lunch at El Templete Spanish restaurant overlooking the entrance of Havana Bay.
- After lunch, we have a private visit of the artist Wilfredo Lam Cultural Center. Whilst in Old Havana we will also visit artists studios including two of Cuba’s best known, Nelson Dominguez and Roberto Fabelo where we will have a chance to exchange commentaries with them about their work.
- Back to the hotel to refresh.
- Dinner at “La Guarida”, the most famous paladar in Havana. This restaurant provided some of the settings for the Cuban Oscar nominated film “Fresas y Chocolate”.
- Free evening with plenty of suggestions for night owls. We recommend La Zorra y el Cuervo night club for impressive Jazz lovers, Salon Rojo in the Hotel Capri for dancing ot the famous pre Revoloution nightclub, La Tropicana. The hotel Nacional has a very good smaller scale Tropicana style haunt, Le Parisien!
Day 3. - Havana
- Breakfast in the hotel.
- We visit the Cuban Fine Arts Museum (Museo de Bellas Artes) with the personal guidance of one of its curators. We will also visit the studio of Flora Fong – and with luck, her son Li Dominguez, who is a rising artist as well as artists Agustin Bejerano and Ever Fonseca.
- We pay a visit to Jose Fusters house in the western district of Havana known as Jaimanitas for a traditional Cuban lunch prepared by his family. Mr. Fuster is a Cuban painter and ceramist who has extended his art to the surrounding community including bus stops – the whole area looks like a Gaudiesque extravaganza.
- After lunch we visit the studio of artist Ibrahim Miranda in Vedado.
- Back to the hotel to change.
- Dinner tonight at L’Atelier paladar.
Day 5.– Havana airport
- Breakfast in the hotel.
- Free morning.
- Transfer from Hotel to Havana Airport to catch flight back home.
END OF THE PROGRAM