Fodor's Cuba, 1st Edition: Expert Advice and Smart Choices: Where to Stay, Eat, and Explore On and Off the Beaten Path (Travel Guide) - Softcover

Fodor's

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679004556 ISBN 13: 9780679004554

Publisher: Fodor's, 2000

Synopsis

Fodor's Cuba"Fodor's guides are always a pleasure." - The Chicago Tribune

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Here's a guidebook that complements Fodor's Cuba. To learn more about it, just enter the title in the keyword search box.Fodor's Exploring Cuba: An information-rich cultural guide in full color.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Destintion: Cuba

Ever since Christopher Colombus called the largest of the Antilles "the most beautiful thing human eyes ever beheld," everyone who has known Cuba has fallen hopelessly in love with the place. Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Ava Gardner, Winston Churchill, King Edward VIII...Cuba has had many passionate admirers. Novelists, in particular, have found Cuba fertile hunting grounds for comedy, tragedy, and, above all perhaps, for poiesis -- the production of art and emotion. Cuba is consistently moving in a poetic way.

At once the most Spanish country in the Americas and the most Americanized of the Hispanic countries in the New World, Cuba is on the cusp of all things: New World and Old, Atlantic and Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and Straits of Florida, Uncle Sam and Latin America, animism and Catholicism, Africa and Spain, east and west, and -- for the last 40 years -- individualism and collectivism, capitalism and socialism. Cuba is romantic and irresistible, it would seem, precisely because it's so conflicted, so paradoxal, so relentlessly ripe with irony, so impossible.

Dining

On the island's eastern end, dishes are more Caribbean and less Spanish; they're prepared with more spices and are typically cooked in coconut oil and lechita (coconut milk). Eastern dishes include congrí oriental (rice and red kidney beans), bacón (a plantain tortilla filled with spicy pork), and tetí (a small, orange fish caught in the river estuaries between August and December.) Rice is yellow not from saffron but from annatto seeds, also used to color butter. "Indian bananas" are boiled in their salmon-colored skins and dressed with garlic and lime juice.

Desserts include specialties such as guayaba (guava paste) or mermelada de mango (mango jelly), both often served con queso (with cheese). The eastern treat, cucurucho, is made of coconut, sweet orange, papaya, and honey. Of course the island's love affair with sugarcane led to its ron (rum) industry. While you're here, be sure to have a mojito (light rum, sugar, mint, and soda; from the verb "mojar," meaning "to moisten, to wet" as in "to wet your whistle") or the classic daiquiri (blended light rum, lime, and ice). If you'd like the sugar experience without the kick, have a guarapo (cane juice; thought to be an aphrodisiac).

Music

Your Cuban journey will no doubt be accompanied by a veritable soundtrack of island music. There are countless genres, from classical to Latin jazz to such hybrids of European and African sounds as salsa, timba, conga, rumba, bolero, son, danzón, guájira, mambo, nueva, and vieja trova. And every community seems to have some sort of weekly musical event. On a typical Sunday night in Trinidad (where two music havens -- La Casa de la Musica and La Casa de la Trova -- are steps from each other), for example, you might encounter a septet led by a man of 70-odd years playing for a crowd of 50. Men and women of all ages will no doubt dance with confidence and aplomb.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fodor's
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0679004556
• ISBN 13: 9780679004554
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 240