My guests on Cuban tours often ask me where they can find the best Cuban sandwich in Havana. There are a few places that serve them but not many. This tasty toasted ham and cheese sandwich originated in Florida where it became very popular among Cuban expatriate workers but it never caught on in Cuba itself.
The sandwich that’s called the “Cubano”
Might best be called “Americano”
It’s loved in Miami,
Tampa and Tamiami
But it’s awfully rare in Havana.
From 1939 to 1960, Novelist Ernest Hemingway lived at Finca Vigia, a villa near Havana. On tour in Cuba, Laetitia took her group there and to La Bodeguita del Medio, Hemingway’s favorite mojito bar. The mojito is a Cuban cocktail made from rum, sugar, mint, and limejuice.
When Hemingway lived near Havana
He found it a drinker’s nirvana
He liked a mojito
At La Bodeguita
As he mingled with other bar fauna.
Laetitia went with Granny to see John Houston’s 1951 film, The African Queen, based on a novel with the same name by C. S. Forrester. Set in German East Africa at the advent of World War I and starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, it was immensely popular but censors hated it because of the premarital liaison between the Rose, the chaste missionary and the crusty gin-soaked boat captain, Charlie Allnut. It was filmed during a time when married couples couldn’t be shown in bed together in movies or on television.
In The African Queen, the sweet sin
That led to the censors’ chagrin
Was a prenuptial rut,
Rose with Charlie Allnut,
The boat’s captain who relished his gin.