Hello from Armonia LIVE

[EngIceDave]

Good morning from the coast of Cuba

[LaCal]

Are you in Cuba tomorrow? 

 

Also have you tried any of the food in the White Lion Pub? 

 

Hope the casino is still treating you well 🍀🍀🍀💰💰💰🍀🍀🍀

Edited March 23, 2019 by LaCal

[EngIceDave]

Today and tomorrow

 

No, but looked at menu, was like 3 things, one was a chicken quesadilla, I remember that. 

 

Last night did well, cashed a $600+ ticket from machine I mentioned, was in for 200

 

 

[NCTribeFan]

Doing this itinerary in May.  Haven't booked a single excursion.  Prefer independent excursions but I may just book something through the ship.  If I thought we'd have a "long" day in Coz, I'd book the Tulum tour but I don't want to go there for a short day.  It's a long bus ride!  Went there on my very first cruise and came very, very close to being sick on the ferry on the way back.

 

Other threads about the Cuba itineraries have said the Visas would be left in your cabin.  I certainly don't plan on sitting in the cabin waiting for the steward to show up!

 

I'd love to sail Empress again.  That was my 2nd cruise way back before RCI sold her off and then brought her back.  Lovely little ship.  I believe their Cuba itineraries visit two different ports rather than an overnight in Havana.  And the price for their sailing was way more than MSC, so two reasons for me to pick Armonia.

 

Looking forward to seeing what your Havana experience is like!

[EngIceDave]

I agree about the Visa thing, so I don’t know if something changed or not, only our experience and what the CS desk told us. 

 

We have an independent excursion each day, today is a walking food tour, tomorrow we have a private 3 hour car tour. 

 

I won’t mention names or anything until after, in order to comply with CC guidelines. 

 

Based on on our food tour, and recommendations by our guide, we’ll decide about dinner ashore and wandering about in the evening, thought during the Cuba briefing, we were assured Havana is very safe, even at night

[EngIceDave]

Oh yeah, I have ATT for mobile service, and apparently it will be very expensive to use. I mistakenly left my cellular data on, and got a text from ATT saying data is $2.00mb, phone is $3.00 a minute, texting was .50 per and $1.50 per on photo/video texts

 

Other news, we already got our disembark info, and as Aurea, we are “Black” luggage tags and off at 7:45am

 

Here’s the disembark timelines.

 

 

[EngIceDave]

Something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime, the Havana skyline

 

 

[EngIceDave]

Being a Miami/So Florida native, it really is almost emotional to be here in the flesh. 

[NCTribeFan]

Just read another Armonia thread and really like the idea of "free" walking tours and am considering the Classic Car tour in the afternoon after we arrive, the nightlife walking tour that night after dinner on the ship, then the Historic City walking tour the next morning at 10.

 

About the internet service:  DD will probably need to stay in touch with work (I most definitely will NOT stay in touch with work!).  The Standard Internet says up to two devices - when I put it in my cart, it shows each of us.  Do I just select her and then I can also access whatever as long as she's not connected?

 

And about disembarking - we have a late flight out of FLL - like 7:20 pm!  Our cabin is on Deck 9, so we'd have one of the latest times (10am) anyway.  But I'd like to wait until the absolute last minute possible and book an 11am shuttle.  Then we'd only have to sit around the airport for about 7 hours.  Ugh!

[LaCal]

2 hours ago, EngIceDave said:

Being a Miami/So Florida native, it really is almost emotional to be here in the flesh. 

How’s the heat? 

[LaCal]

6 hours ago, EngIceDave said:

Today and tomorrow

 

No, but looked at menu, was like 3 things, one was a chicken quesadilla, I remember that. 

 

Last night did well, cashed a $600+ ticket from machine I mentioned, was in for 200

 

 

Nice going on the Win last night in the casino 😜🍀🍀🍀💰💰💰🍀🍀🍀

 

How are the casino hosts?  I heard there’s 2 Ladies.....Every Cruise we normally get comped a Steak House dinner by mid week or so based on our playing....Hoping they will as well or Oh Well we’re still going to try the Steak house 

 

Looking forward to your photos and review of Cuba 

[MrFunInTheSun]

Great live review. Thanks for bringing us along.

[EngIceDave]

Part 1 of a couple of these in Havana

 

Havana is awesome...such a cool city.
We walked around for a few hours and then met our guide for our walking food tour, we started at a restaurant called Mojito Mojito and tried some tapas, a fish croquette, a fraud plantain and a some fried root plant cslled Malanga...was really good. Then went to a churro stand where they fried them fresh in front of us, and you could get sugar, cinnamon/sugar, chocolate syrup or a caramel sauce. After that, we went to a small paladares (family owned, non-government) restaurant where we had a fresh lobster tail in a tomato sauce (very light) and it was a fresh caught lobster as you could tell in taste and could taste the salinity of the waters. Really good and a local Cuban man played a few songs on guitar for us. After that, we headed back to Mojito Mojito (also a Paladares) and had a fantastic black beans and rice with roasted pork. Being from So Florida, this was what I wanted to try to compare Miami Cuban food to Cuban Cuban food...It was really good. The roast pork was so tender, it just fell apart. The black beans were a good texture and the taste, while a little different than I am used to, was very good. To wrap up our 3.5 hour walking and eating tour, we had locally made ice cream, me having mango and wife having Lemon, which seemed more sorbet like than ice cream.

 

HIGHLY recommend Yaz of Havanatours.com (if I remember right, have to double check)

she was more than informative and willing to answer all of our prying questions about life in Cuba. We have a 3 hour private car tour tomorrow in a convertible old car (They’re everywhere)

i won’t post any pricing in the event it goes up or down, don’t want to create any issue on pricing and booking, but we did direct book, no MSC involved.

 

Sorry if pics are out of order as to how I wrote it....

 

[EngIceDave]

Don’t know why it posted a screen shot...

and again, sorry for the typos. Posting and typing onto an iPad. 

 

This is where we had the lobster tail, as you can see

 

oh, regarding the weather, we could not have better weather...clear, breezy and cool...not cold....just perfect....maybe 70-something?

[EngIceDave]

Found proper name of tour.... foodtourshavana.com 

 

 

[LaCal]

The Food looks great and Wow that’s great great weather 

 

Hoping the first week of May isn’t to hot 

 

We’re going to a place that’s suppose to have really good Lobster for lunch on one of the days 😜

[PhotoFlo]

Great review, thank you. We board this ship on 4/2 and can't wait.  

Are you able to see the weeks menue in advance?  We are Black status and will receive a complimentary dinner at a specialty restaurant and would like to plan which night to go.  Thank you. 

[EngIceDave]

This is what everyone can to see and was looking forward to....

[EngIceDave]

23 minutes ago, PhotoFlo said:

Great review, thank you. We board this ship on 4/2 and can't wait.  

Are you able to see the weeks menue in advance?  We are Black status and will receive a complimentary dinner at a specialty restaurant and would like to plan which night to go.  Thank you. 

 

From what I can tell, menus are the same each tour, same day, same food, and Beamafar did a great job of posting all the menus in her review of the ship and stops, that is why I haven’t posted them, it’d be redundant 

[travelingtink]

I am even more excited for my turn now. I'm doing a food tour also, but different company. 

 

I know you posted the correct pronunciation of the ship a few days ago, but I was still saying it wrong. I was at a travel show today in which MSC was one of the major sponsors. I went to their 30 min presentation and had an ah ha moment when she started talking about our ship. I had a little chuckle when I remembered this thread. 

[Annapolisr]

Wowza!  Super review, pics.  Tytyty

[EngIceDave]

Today was a classic car tour, a three hour tour, a three hour tour....

just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale....oh, wait 

never mind, yeah...car tour

 

went through town, out to suburb of Miramar, visited an artist’s home and neighborhood of Fusterland...wild and crazy...was to go to cigar factory, and this was replacement because of a state inventory, and super glad we did this as a replacement. We went through a state park and forest, made a stop at the Cuba National Hotel, even made a cool shopping stop at a store right across from the Capitol Building. 

 

Again our guide was Yas of FoodToursHavana.com , I HIGHLY recommend using that web site. We could not have received any more of a personal experience, my wife and I feel we now have a friend in Havana.

 

We rode around in a ‘51 Chevy

 

enjoy some photos of today....this won’t be the end of my report, as I’ll review everything, fill in any blanks and put up more photos. The WiFi on this ship is spotty and weak, so it takes a lot of time.

 

BTW, that reminds me, THERE IS NO WIFI IN HAVANA....zero, nada

Wifi is regulated and expensive, so there is no free WiFi about town and cellular data is expensive, as I mentioned earlier, ATT rate in Cuba (there is no international rate plan for Cuba) is $2.00MB USD...be crazy money to post anything on a website or even email will get costly quick.

 

time to be on board was 3:30, we promptly left at 4:00pm on the nose

[CruisingFox27]

Fabulous pictures. We've just booked the opposite itinerary so following with added interest now. 

[EngIceDave]

7 minutes ago, CruisingFox27 said:

Fabulous pictures. We've just booked the opposite itinerary so following with added interest now. 

 

Opposite?

[PhotoFlo]

Thank you for responding on the menus, I will look for them. Great review! Looking forward to next week!