recapitulating cuba: trinidad

like havana, trinidad, along with the nearby valle de los ingenios, is a unesco-designated world heritage site ---  it was founded in 1514 on the southern coast of the island and fortunes were made until the demise of slavery and subsequent decline of the sugar mills crashed the local economy --- as a result the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century city remains mostly intact --- the biggest, newest hotels are on the beach, three or four miles south of the city, but there is a lot of investment in the old city for the kind of tourism that supports much of the economy today

we had two nights, an entire day, and part of another to explore this magnificent city, but that was not nearly enough --- the city center is in great shape, but like havana, it looks very run-down, but never trashy, the further one gets from the central plaza ---

i had rather that we had stayed in a hotel in town, and not in a late-20th century resort on the hillside above the city --- but there were excellent views of sunrise and sunset over the caribbean and it was a good walk to and from the old city ---

the breakfast buffet somehow bore little resemblance to a breakfast buffet at, say, the hampton inn in the wilds of south georgia --- of interest were the eggs scrambled with finely shredded cabbage and onion

a delicious morning pick-me-up in the tropics, a resurrected recipe, with music: brandy, honey, lemon, water, ice

additional refreshment for the afro-cuban dance and music

the accuracy of the google translation of "palenque de los congos reales" is uncertain:

"arena of the real howlers"? 

i lost track of the musicians who entertained us at meals, most of them good and all hoping to sell us a cd --- 

our last waiter in remedios bore an unfortunate resemblance to rudolph hess --- here we have the very handsome young george hamilton 

el museo de arquitectura colonial is a great little museum --- i wish we had had time to see all of the museums just around the plaza mayor, but we would have needed an entire day to do that after our basic introduction to the town

the museum is located in the casa de los sánchez iznaga, which consists of two eighteenth-century residences, one dating to 1738 and the other to 1785, combined into a single palatial residence in 1886

the exhibits on local architecture during the colonial period were good, with a lot of things, not surprisingly, reminiscent of cane river creole nhp in louisiana

i could have spent a lot of time in that courtyard and gallery, which date to the 1886 remodeling when the houses were combined

dog enjoying some shady dirt in the courtyard