Posted on 03/23/2015 8:00:32 AM PDT by posterchild
HAVANA (AP) — Bookings to Cuba jumped 57 percent for one New York tour operator in the weeks after Washington said it would renew ties with Havana. In February, they were up 187 percent; and so far this month, nearly 250 percent.
The boom is just one sign that the rush is on to see Cuba now — before, as many predict, McDonald's claims a spot in Old Havana and Starbucks moves in on Cubita, the island's premium coffee brand.
The sense that detente will unleash an invasion of Yankee tourists and change the unique character of one of the world's last remaining bastions of communism is shared by many travelers flocking here.
"Cuba has a very authentic atmosphere which you see nowhere else in the world," Gay Ben Aharon of Israel said while walking through Revolution Square. "I wanted to see it before the American world ... but also the modern Western world comes here."
Outsiders may romanticize the "time-capsule" nation, but many on the island are ready for change.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
The architecture is terrific. I wonder where they’ll put the people while they’re restoring.
And Las Vegas would still be a small town, Havana would be Vegas times ten.
Cuba is a beautiful country with friendly people. It is also a country filled with crippling poverty. I would go again as it is endlessly fascinating.
You’re quite right. When I lived there, I paid my maid $60 a month via the maid’s bureau (CUBALSE). The Cuban government insisted that the rate of exchange was one-to-one, so she received P60 a month, not the agreed-upon US $60; I had to pony up an additional US$60. It was still a good deal for us.
>>What would have happened to Castro if LBJ would have “normalized” relations with Cuba? Would he have seen the light or just stepped down? I mean it isn’t like he was or is a ruthless dictator or anything.
Age of Steam thinking in an electronic world is a recipe for intellectual suicide. The Soviet Union eventually fell because of the media delivered comparison between the standards of living in the west vs. the SU. Cuba wouldn’t have taken nearly that long. Had we engineered the removal of Santos Trafficante’s #1 capo, Fulgencio Batista instead of leaving it up to Castro, Castro would never have existed.
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