February 23, 2009 was another gorgeous day and another great opportunity for more explorations of the city of Santiago de Cuba. Early, at 7:30 am, we took the hotel workers bus’ into town again and spent an hour riding into Cuba’s second largest town, all in the air-conditioned comfort of a modern Chinese built bus. An hour later we had arrived near the centre of the city and went for a short walk to the Parque Cespedes, Santiago’s main square. One of the main sights on this square is the Hotel Casa Granda, a stately hotel built in the early 1920s. I had read that there was a great rooftop terrace on this hotel so we walked inside to find the elevator. A local by the name of Carlos joined us right away and provided us with all sorts of unsolicited tourist information in broken English. He started to show us around without asking, one of Cuba’s many “independent travel entrepreneurs” (also called “jinetero”). When we left the hotel, Carlos kept following us and feeding us information about various local attractions, and finally led us to a local “paladar”, a privately owned licensed restaurant (one of the few private enterprises that Cuba allows), and we sat down to have a breakfast. The meal was tasty and affordable. After a filling early morning meal we continued our walk and Carlos showed us one of the more popular sights in Santiago: the Escaleras de Padre Pico, a stairway of 52 steps that was built in 1899 under mayor Emilio Bacardi. These stairs are the entranceway …
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