the helen update: cuba - the wrap up! #day8

we enjoyed our last morning at the suite, and headed out to finally get to a few of the havana viejo museums. little did I know this would provide some more insight into cuban life, but not because of what was on display! we walked into the museum of the revolution and were greeted by a lovely cuban lady who was so excited to show us around, sharing everything about the history of cuba. as we walked through looking at the artifacts, flags and other stuff that is typically seen in a museum (you can see how much I get from museums), the funny part was the cuban lady herself! she took our camera, urging us to pose for photos here, there and everywhere as she snapped away eagerly as if we were the first tourists to ever enter the museum. as she came to the end of her turf in the museum (each guard seems to be assigned to a couple of rooms that they cover), she awaited her tip. and on we moved to the next room to experience the same thing with the next cuban lady/guard, and this went on as we progressed through the museum handing over money each time as it was expected. we moved on to another museum and the same situation occurred, only this time, one of the ladies continued to pursue us after she got her tip, telling us in spanish about all her ‘ninos’ and asking for more than we gave her. we came to realize this is the typical situation so we opted to pass on the rest of the museums before we ran out of money and had none left to pay the airport fees! interesting that we had not experienced this aggressive behavior until the last day of the trip, and I was pretty happy we had skipped most of the more tourist-y exhibits after finding out that this is the norm. we went back to the suite to bid farewell to our casa owners, leandis and francois, and headed to the airport.

as we entered the airport through the same door we came through a week earlier, it seemed that way more than a week had passed - more like 2 decades because of the time warp we found in cuba. we loved exploring the city, experiencing the throwback culture, and most importantly, meeting the very special people of the country. the memories will stay with us and we are already in contact with our new friends via email, depending upon when and if they can get to a wifi hotspot!

adios!