it's jewsica

Apparently this Tumblr has become my go-to place for writing obsessive posts about things I love. SO...

Everyone knows my Hamilton feelings are real. Bordering on insanity. If I have seen you in the past year or so, it’s pretty much a given that I forced you to listen to me talk about this show and how magnificent it is. Magnificent. For anyone who doesn’t quite understand what the big deal is, feel free to peruse this. I know it’s hard to imagine a “hip hop musical about US history” being any way interesting, relevant or engaging.. But I promise it absolutely is.

In The Beginning..

Lin-Manuel Miranda was invited to the White House in 2009 to perform a song from “In The Heights”. Instead, he gave the first ever performance of a song from the new show he was working on: Hamilton. [VIDEO]

For reference, this is what that song looked like at the Grammys  in 2016. [VIDEO]

Must See Videos

2016 #Bam4Ham White House Performances: “Alexander Hamilton” and “My Shot” - this version of “My Shot” is probably my favorite Ham video of all time. Lin & President Obama freestyling is also a must watch.

“Yorktown” - Their incredible Tony Awards performance of my favorite scene in the entire show. *PS.. dear CBS.. STOP DELETING THIS VIDEO OFF YOUTUBE*

Ham4Ham - Ham4Ham is the live show the cast used to do 2x/week before the lottery. Eventually, the crowds got too big for them to continue doing these live. The YT channel is a combination of live videos and the YT-only versions. This guy also apparently attends all the live Ham4Hams and shoots them all.

These are a few of my favorite Ham4Hams.

OK, that’s good, but really what is the big deal?

Well how about the fact that Lin-Manuel Miranda is a national treasure? Or that Daveed Diggs (Lafayette / Jefferson) is mesmerizing? Or that Leslie Odom Jr.’s (Aaron Burr) voice is more than any of us can handle.

But what if I don’t like showtunes?

Stop being difficult. You need to have an open mind. Hamilton is probably the least-showtunes-y show you can imagine. In fact, the first time I saw it, I actually wished there were a few MORE traditional Broadway show stoppers. Here are a few links on Lin’s hip hop influences and how he managed to make a hip hop musical about the founding of America into something completely serious and non-cheesy:

“How Does ‘Hamilton’ the non-stop, hip hop Broadway sensation tap rap’s master rhymes to blur musical lines” - Wall Street Journal

Lin’s annotations for his lyrics - Rap Genius

Lin’s playlist of lyrical influences - Spotify

I guess I should start wrapping this up, but a few more notes about lodging.

Where To Stay:

The most common accommodations for people to use in Cuba are casa particulars. These are basically rooms in people’s houses that they rent out. They are actually an incredible way to experience the country. The people you stay with can be incredibly helpful as you figure out how to navigate things. For example, our host family in Vinales helped us find a shared taxi to Cayo Levisa after we were told by 3 different official agencies that there were no taxis available. And this was after they had already arranged horseback riding for us, and helped us figure out what to do in town. As I already mentioned in an earlier post, the woman running our casa in Havana arranged our taxis to and from the airport, and the shared taxi to Vinales where we ended up meeting friends we hung out with for much of the rest of the trip. The people you stay with will understandably know much more about the country than you, so are extremely interesting to get to know, in addition to being an invaluable resource while you’re there. We also ended up becoming incredibly good friends with someone who worked at our Havana casa, and he went out with us twice and showed us around the city at night, and we still keep in touch today. I seriously could not have asked for a better experience. Some things to note:

-Finding a casa particular used to be a much more difficult and time consuming experience consisting of calling, leaving voicemails, waiting for responses, or doing something similar with emails. But recently, Airbnb opened up there, and now Americans can use the site to book casa particulars. Apparently only Americans can do this. I have no idea why. But we ended up using Airbnb for 2 out of 3 cities. Another site that has been around for a long time is Cuba Junky. We also used BBinVinales.com to book in Trinidad. 

-The types of casas will vary greatly. In Havana, it was more of a hostel situation where no one really lived in the house full time. But in Vinales and Trinidad, we were staying in rooms in the houses. I’m including links to the exact listings to the places we stayed in each city, because I would 100% recommend all of them. Seriously, each was so different, but great. Look at Casa Mauri in Trinidad - there was a courtyard full of 90 birds, a historical library, and tons of old photos and maps everywhere. I felt a liiiiittle bad showing up at 4am one night, but they didn’t even seem to hate us for that. 

-Another reason Casas are great is that, for around 5CUC, they’ll provide you with a huge breakfast. Some also provide dinner for a similar price. Our dinner at our casa in Vinales was the best food we had in the entire town, and it was a great experience to eat with the family. 

-The hotel situation in Cuba isn’t great. The options are very limited, which means most nicer hotels are sold out way in advance. I’m SURE this is about to change very quickly (ie: Starwood is converting the Hotel Ingloterra in to a W). The 3 best options I know of are The Saratoga, The Ingloterra, Hotel Florida.  

-Even though we didn’t stay at the Ingloterra, it is very near and dear to my heart. It was super close to where we stayed in Habana Vieja (right on Parque Central), and they had WiFi. We basically used this as our home base whenever we needed to use Internet, or wanted to stop in and take a break. There are also tourism desks and phones you can use (possibly without their permission..) And VERY IMPORTANT: they sell wifi cards. Remember that! They didn’t mind when we sat in the lobby for a while, or sat on the porch cafe. You can also access the wifi from the park. It’s a great central meeting place if you’re trying to meet up with people, and we definitely utilized that. 

What else? So many things to talk about.. OH! Since I know we’re all 100% addicted to the Internet at all times, this next section will undoubtedly be very important to anyone reading this.

INTERNET

Your phone isn’t going to work. Sorryyyyy. Internet in Cuba is not readily available, and your connection is going to be fairly slow and unreliable compared to what you’re used to. You have a few options if you want to connect. Or, you know, post really cool Instagram photos and brag to your friends about your trip.

1. Really terrible slow internet cafes (as in, I paid $6 CUC for 20 mins and opened 1 email). Please enjoy this photo I took of my 1 experience using this in Trinidad. Internet superhighway! Honestly, I loved it, I can’t lie. 

2. WiFi: Wifi is relatively new in Havana - I believe the first wifi hotspots were only installed in the summer of 2015. There are a few of these scattered throughout the cities. You will know where they are because tons of people sit around outside them. BUT you can’t just go to one and expect to connect. you will need to purchase wifi cards with username/passwords to get online. These cost around $1-$2 CUC/hour. There are ETECSA (the phone/internet organization) offices in every city where you can buy these. Expect to wait on a line. But once you have the cards, you can usually sit outside these buildings and use wifi. You can also buy the wifi cards at some hotels - I used the Hotel Ingloterra for this once I figured it out. No line, and then you can sit in their lobby or outside and use their wifi. 

I should note that, again, my experience comes from 3 more touristed areas: Havana, Vinales and Trinidad. While Internet is accessible in those places, I have no idea what the situation is in more rural areas. I would guess it’s much less available or barely available at all. 

OK so you booked your trip - yay! But what happens when you actually get there? Read on...

The Airport:

DON’T CHECK BAGS. REPEAT: DON’T CHECK BAGS. We carried everything on the plane with us, so managed to get in/out of the airport super quickly. But I heard stories of waiting at the luggage carousel for hours and lots of lost luggage. Just be a sensible person and bring a carry on. I should note that I found the Havana Airport to be super efficient and well run as a whole. I had WAY more issues in the Cancun airport than I did in Havana. 

Money:

OK the money situation is STRESSFUL, so pay attention to this part. If you have a US based ATM or credit card, it will NOT work in Cuba. I called Chase before I left and they made sure to tell me they couldn’t offer any support while I was there. You’re going to need to get out enough money to last you for your entire trip, so definitely spend time planning in advance. 

Moving on: You can only get Cuban money in Cuba. You can’t even get it at the Mexican airport so expect to wait in a line at the airport when you arrive to take it out. This is your first of many lines.. just be cool about it. We didn't check bags, so our line was pretty short, but it got longer while we were waiting. You get charged 10% for changing USD. I first switched my dollars to Mexican Pesos at JFK, then switched my pesos to Cuban money when I got there. People do this with Euros too.

There are 2 types of currency: CUCs and Pesos. Honestly, it’s really absurdly confusing and stressful when you’re quickly trying to change money to decide what to get, and the line is growing and you don’t speak Spanish. Oof. Here’s what you should know: CUCs are what all tourists generally use and Pesos are what most Cubans use. 1CUC = 1USD, Pesos are like 8453803 to 1USD. We got out probably 90% CUCs and a few Pesos. Pesos are good for small street vendors and markets. I don’t think we ever used these in Havana - mainly outside the city in Vinales and Trinidad. And some places pretend not to accept them from tourists anyway, so you might end up stuck with a lot of these if you get out too many.

We found 1 other exchange place on Calle Obispo in Havana if you need to exchange more money. There will be a line here too. And sometimes it randomly closes while you’re waiting. “This is Cuba”. I’m sure other cities have exchange places too, but we only tried in Havana. 

Taxis:

If you’re staying at a casa particular (which you should be), they should arrange a taxi from/to the airport for you. Don't pay more than $25 for this and ask them in advance to set it up. They'll pick you up at the airport and it's much easier. And you’ll probably end up in a ‘57 Chevy or something that will play you amazing music as an intro to the city, which is incredible. . 

You’re going to overpay for taxis because you’re a tourist. Apparently you shouldn't pay more than $3ish for a taxi, but people will try to charge more. Negotiate. Or, better yet, make friends with Cubans, have them negotiate the price for you, they'll get a better deal. When people started helping us, we got much better prices than when 2 American girls walked up. Plus, Cuban boys are cute, just talk to them. 

This got really long really quickly.. more to come!

First of all, the name “this is Cuba”. This was a phrase our favorite Cuban friends Orlando and Vladimir kept saying throughout the evening as a number of things happened: Taxi gets pulled over by the police for playing rap videos in the car while driving? “This is Cuba”. Taxi then breaks down and we have to go to a repair shop? “This is Cuba” Drive around for an hour only to end up at a bar you went to the first night? “This is Cuba”.

I’m pointing this out because it’s important. When you’re there, you just sort of need to go with it. Things aren’t necessarily going to happen the way you want them to. But it’s ok - talk to people. They’ll tell you what to do. And then.. just accept that you’ll probably be 3 hours late to whatever you were planning, but it’s fine. Enjoy the ride. 

All that aside.. here are some basics!

Getting There:

Are you an American? Cool. Technically you probably can’t go to Cuba unless you fall under 1 of 12 official categories. Pro tip: you definitely fall under 1 of these 12 categories. Don’t bother with the shady travel agencies/charter flights. They’re expensive, unresponsive and you don’t need them. Here is what we did:

1. Flight to/from Cancun, Mexico. Separate flight from Cancun to/from Havana. We used Aeromexico, but a lot of non-American airlines run daily flights to Cuba.

2. Buy your tourist visa card at the Cancun airport from your airline counter. It was $25 when we went. They’ll take this from you when you leave the country. Try not to lose this while you’re there.

3. When you check in, make sure they give you a paper with boxes to check your official reason for going. You can find these 12 categories basically anywhere on the Internet, so I’m not going to list them here. They take this when you board the plane. But make sure they really give it to you - my airline representative didn’t, so I had to go back and get it. 

Note: I know a lot of people say they didn’t get their passport stamped when they entered Cuba, but I did. It felt too weird to ask them not to. I had zero problems when I re-entered the US, so it’s not a big deal to have that stamp on your passport. Just be ready to tell the TSA your reason for being there when they ask. They won’t give you a hard time. 

I went to Cuba in February and absolutely fell in love. It’s basically all I have talked about since I got back. Since then, a lot of people have asked me for advice on how to get there, what to do there, where to stay, etc. It can be complicated - but it’s incredible because it’s complicated - so I decided to start a series of posts explaining what I did. Certainly there are tons of other ways to do Cuba, but this is some general advice for how we did it. Check back here for a series of posts as I excitedly remember important things!

xoxo - Jessica (and Claire. fyi: if you travel with your female friend there and tell people you don’t have a boyfriend, everyone will ask you if you’re dating. I guess maybe we do look like we’re dating..)