Boy, my dogs are barking! There is a lot of walking to do in this town. Luckily the harbor where Pandora is anchored, called Punta Gorda, is a ‘short’ walk into Cienfuegos—only about 20 minutes. However, day after day, that really adds up! A couple of days we walked between 4 and 5 miles, and one day we walked over 8 miles. And it’s hot! Have I mentioned it’s hot?? Bob keeps asking me if I want a sweater. The answer is still YES! And I want the weather to go with it!
On the first day we found a small shop along the main street in Cienfuegos, where a woman (younger than I am) sells various items of handwork that include crochet and embroidery. There were embroidered table linens and lots of crocheted sweaters and shawls. There was a rack of sewn clothing, traditional Cuban guayaberra type shirts for men and some lovely women’s tops embellished with machine sewn tucks and hand embroidery. It was a small shop, decorated like a living room in a house. After talking with the owner for a bit we learned it is her house and the shop was most likely her living room. At one point her elementary school aged son came out from an interior door, wearing a school uniform. It was late afternoon, she kissed him goodbye, and he was off to some after school activity. Bob happened to see through the door that there was a bed in that room.
The owner spoke English quite well and we were able to talk about a number of things. She made some of the crocheted items herself, but many were done by other family members. They were all lightweight pieces made with fine threads for wearing in the hot climate of Cuba. The sweaters were all open work that would be worn over a tank top or camisole. They were really lovely. The owner—silly me! I did not get her name—prefers knitting herself, and that launched us on a great conversation because we’ve both been knitting since we were very young. She can knit carrying the yarn in either hand, as can I, and she can knit in either direction like I can. I think I’d enjoy knowing her.
We stopped again the next day, when Bob wasn’t so hot, so he could try on some of the guayaberras. We chose one, and I bought a small table square that had pulled thread embroidery in the center and a nice hemstitched edging. I would love to have bought more, but there was no more to buy. I was also hoping to find other handwork shops, but no luck on that! We passed a window (open shutters, no glazing) where a woman was sitting at a sewing machine, sewing a garment out of white fabric. Behind her on the back wall of this tiny room there were some traditional Cuban clothing for men and babies hanging on a rack. She motioned for us to come in, but it felt so cramped in the tiny room that we passed on that.
One day we had lunch in the Palacio de Jagua that is now a government owned restaurant and tourist spot. Each day I think bus-loads of tourists are brought here for lunch. We managed to find a table for lunch in between two bus tours. A palacio is a large, ornate structure where government offices are on the lower floors and a residence for the higher-ranking government official is on the upper floors. In this palacio the lifestyle was very ornate, Moorish Victorian. It felt very strange to eat a meal in such a luscious Moorish setting. It felt like eating in a mosque, and that felt rather sacrilegious—even though this building had never beena mosque. All the lacy cutwork on the walls was plaster. It is a beautiful space. The building is about 3 stories tall and there is a terrazzo bar on the roof. We plan to visit there this evening.
The Palacio de Jagua
This is the entrance to the Palacio
The dining room:
We have tackled buying some food items in the local shops. We’ve now bought several kinds of bread from a panaderia, and from street vendors on bikes with large boxes of pastries strapped on the back with bungy cords. Yesterday we had an interesting experience trying to buy cheese and butter. People kept getting in front of us on the cheese/butter line—at a counter in the back of the shop where cheese and butter are stored. Finally when there was no one left to get in front of us I asked for ‘queso y mantequilla.’ The man motioned and said in ‘Spanglish’ that we had to pay for cheese and butter in the checkout line before we could get it from him. Okay….we had waited a long time to get this info, and off we went to wait in the checkout line, where all those people who’d gotten in front of us were now waiting to pay for their cheeses that supposedly they had already paid for. That did not make sense to me, but when I finally got to the cashier I told her that we wanted a kilo of cheese and a ‘brick’ of butter. She looked at the empty counter –where are the goods? I explained that the cheese counter man had told me to pay first. This started a barrage of angry sounding Spanish between the two—the woman in the front of the store and the cheese man at the back of the store speaking very loudly and forcefully to each other across the space. Anyway, it turns out that we had to pay for butter before getting it. Who knows why? We think maybe it is rationed from the lines we saw in Santiago of people waiting to get butter. So we payed for the butter, went back to the cheese counter and got the butter and cheese and then went back to the cashier line to pay for the cheese. Crazy!
We also saw a huge line of Cuban women waiting in front of a women’s clothing shop. The glass door had a sign that said it was open (apierto), but the line was forming outside and no one was going in. I think something of great value may have arrived in that shop and they were monitoring how many could enter at one time. If I could communicate better I would have asked about this.
There is a center park surrounded by a parliament building, a beautiful theater, and church, all dating back to the Victorian era and therefore quite ornate. It’s been a wonderful few days here, even though my feet are tired.
Here is Bob holding his Essex Yacht Club burgee in the park.
Although this photo is really all about the well preserved Buick (??), the theater is in the background. We may try to catch a performance here on Easter Sunday of something we simply cannot fathom from the advertisements at the ticket office.
For us, it will be more about being in the space than seeing the performance!
Before walking back to the marina we stopped for a cold drink and listened to local musicians. The bongo/cow bell player, the mariachi player and the flutist were the singers and they were terrific! They did a rendition of “Volare” that was fabulous! You can just barely see the string base player behind the bongo player.
We have begun making plans for how to get to Havana by bus or taxi for the Rolling Stones concert. Hopefully it will all work out and both of us will be writing about that early next week. We will certainly be among the oldest people there. If the audience is expected to be around 500,000, I wonder if we will even see the stage. Wish us luck!
