Sea soup a bit fishy?

Continuing the Hemingway theme at the Ambos Mundos hotel in Havana on Thursday I spotted a starter on the restaurant menu called The Old Man And The Sea soup as my picture today attests. Given the Hemingway connection I can sort of guess what aspect of the sea might be included in the ingredients, marlin or shark perhaps? But it was the old man bit that captured my imagination. What part of the old man might be mixed in with the fish, some nail clippings?, some earwax? Maybe some nasal hair? Or maybe the Old Man means something far more sinister? Maybe it describes the implement with which the soup has been stirred? As that nice lady decorator remarked, if that were the case at least that could contribute to the fishy taste, although how she would know this is not something I wish to go into here in this column.

Interesting menu choice?

With just a few days to go before I resume my full time (well perhaps that is overstating it) activities for Currencies Direct, yesterday on our last full day in Havana we embarked on a tour of the Havana Club distillery where we learned about the rum making process. The Reverend Jeff will no doubt expect me to make some idiotic remark about it being a rum do, but my style is now at so superior a level I did not even consider the possibility. I did however agree with the chap behind me when it was suggested that we walk through a door made from a giant rum barrel, originally used in the maturing process when he said “I am mature enough already”. I think that now sums up my writing style.

That nice lady decorator, now nearly recovered from her sprained ankle spent most of the tour complaining that here feet hurt, and when, even after the free tot of rum and an extra mohito had been downed she was still complaining, she noticed that she had her new leather sandals on the wrong feet. She will deny it of course but facts are facts.

After lunch taken again at Bodeguita Del Medio comprising braised pork shin with black beans,  fried plantains and sweet potatoes I settled down to enjoy a nice fat Cuban. I know that many of my public schoolboy friends who are regular readers of this daily report may place a different interpretation on this statement but they will know in their hearts that as I did not attend public school I was referring to a nice cigar. I cannot speak for them for certain but I fear the worst.

Last night we succumbed to pressure and decided we would visit the Hotel Nazionale as it was reputed to have a very special cocktail lounge and be a wonderful place for a sundowner at sunset. The fact that we left it until after dark probably did not help but the desperately poor service and ignorant waiters was too much for that nice lady decorator so we left quickly. For me it was the bus loads of tourists returning from their day trips and the number of people with tattoos and wearing scuzzy sleeveless t-shirts or football shirts with socks and big trainers that did it. I may go back today just to check.

Then, after a final lunch in Havana the less than exciting prospect of a ten hour flight with the very disappointing Virgin Atlantic lies ahead but I do not want to dwell on that, instead I shall look forward to the pint of London Pride which doubtless lies ahead in the tender embraces of Buckinghamshire.

Chris France