Cuban dogs

OMG, my last post was in July?!?! Wow, how time flies!
well, I held off posting all the pics of the street dogs until now. But I do have to say that Cubans are very nice to the dogs :) and all the street dogs are very friendly. The whole time I was there the only people I saw shoo them away or look at them in disgust were tourists. I overheard one lady (tourist) comment on how revolting it was that I was feeding and touching a mangy mutt. I turned around and asked her how she would like to be treated if she got some disfiguring skin disease, and she shut up and moved on quickly. After she left some young boys came and sat with me and fed the dogs too :) And they never asked me for anything, they only asked about the dogs. So I bought them ice cream.
ok, on with the pics:
this was our "hotel dog." She was a friendly lil girl, adored by all.


this dog was just chillin on a sidewalk with a bun he'd found somewhere.


and in my opinion, my best picture (in the photography composition sense) of the whole trip!


more dogs sleeping on the stairs of the "Capitolio" building

so six months later...

So six months later…
I finally decide to finish putting my Cuba pics up on my blog. Which, I might add, I created for that sole purpose so I could share with all of you! Oops. Well hey, better late than never! LOL! And at least now I've done some other "blog worthy" things in the last 6 months as well! Rewinding all the way back to January…

Havana, Cuba
Ahhh… the beaches :)

(yes, I realize my pictures jumped around and I'm too lazy to change it! so pfffft!)

And of course, the cute little beach dogs! They are adored by the locals, friendly, and well fed. But they are also crawling with a variety of little beach bugs! And the one day the ocean was calm enough for me to go snorkelling the only thing of interest I saw was a little, clean dog skull. Other than that there was absolutely nothing but sand. No fish, no crabs underwater, not even any seaweed! Really boring snorkelling. Apparently Cuba does have some amazing reefs to dive but the seas were so rough that week, there was no diving anywhere near Havana.

I did find a crab on the beach, but none underwater.

The houses in Cuba range from amazing, colourful houses, to dilapidated apartments and shacks.

A lot of the apartments still have marble entranceways and stairs that leave you to imagine the grandeur that they once were.
At one point my friend William, a Columbian living in Toronto, and I wandered into one of these great old apartments, and went up an old marble staircase until someone asked what we were doing. William chatted them up (in Spanish) saying that we were looking for a friend and managed to get us invited in for tea. A family of four were living in about 400 sq feet, with furniture piled everywhere and a homemade loft bed above. Two to four apartments of people would share one toilet and sink. At one point there was only two large apartments per floor, but each apartment was divided into 4 teeny tiny apartments. Some places didn’t even have doors.

Oh, and I should mention that Cubans love their televisions! At night they leave their doors open and you can wander down the streets and observe Cuban zombies staring mindlessly at their tv’s. (well, I suppose a lot of North Americans do the same, we just don’t leave our doors wide open for all to see every evening )

And finally, since made it to the end of this blog entry I am rewarding you with a dorky "vacation photo" of me on my hotel balcony in Cuba on a very windy day. Pointing and laughing is ok since I can't hear you through your computer anyway ;P

Havana, Cuba

The Hotel Nacional, where I want to stay next time! Its old Spanish Moorish architecture is awe inspiring and its actually pretty reasonably priced! Its in Central Havana and sits up on a small cliff overlooking the ocean.the courtyard patio at the hotel (on a rainy day):

And while I was walking around I just happen to stumble across this little hotel with this fabulous courtyard:And this courtyard/ art gallery that we went into had a rooster as a security guard:
Ok, so I seem to be somewhat obsessed with fantastic little courtyards...
So how about a picture of a cathedral instead? Can't really tell you much about it as I haven't much interest in cathedrals. Maybe I would have liked this one more on a picture perfect sunny day instead of the grey on grey skies theme we've got going on here: