CubaPLUS Magazine

A tight synthesis of the special places that link the writer Ernest Hemingway with Cuba and especially with Havana, begins at the Ambos Mundos hotel, a comfortable establishment inaugurated in 1925 belonging to the Gaviota group, located on Obispo street on the corner of Mercaderes, in thehistorical center of the city.

The writer, who had only been passing through Havana in 1928, on his return trip from Europe to his country, began to stay regularly in room 511, always the same, for about 10 years. He loved the good service, comfortable and no-frills, but very efficient, the versatile bar, and the first-class cuisine. There he wrote much of the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls and another book of maritime tales.

In Ambos Mundos they never forgot the mark left by the distinguished writer at a stage in which his taste for Cuba was growing.And the aforementioned room is a museum piece that pays homage and worship to it.In 1939, already married to the journalist Martha Hellburn, he settled in a paradisiacal country property that he came to acquire in 1940 to take it as his permanent residence, especially in the winter season.

He endowed her with a comfort to his liking, with the luxury of a swimming pool.It was always a clear and open mansion to the splendid nature that surrounded it, and there he frequently received his many friends from the world and spent long days of solitary dawns writing.

We are talking about Finca Vigía, located near the town of San Francisco de Paula, on the outskirts of Havana. Today it is the Hemingway Specialized Museum, where the property that the writer left before leaving for the tremendous decision of his suicide in his homeland is preserved in perfect condition. His widow, Mary Welsh, donated it in its entirety, along with its library and valuable stationery, to the Cuban state.

Knowing this site is important for those who want to peek into the life of the Nobel Prize in the Cuban milieu.Nor should we stop putting his fans for three places of comfort, whose history would no longer be the same without the trail left there by the great narrator of the 20th century.This is the famous El Floridita bar, located near the end of Calle Obispo and near the Central Park and the National Capitol, all classic places in the capital.

A regular at El Floridita for about 10 years, there, in the “cradle of the daiquirí”, they prepared a special version of the snowy drink for him, which had a lot of rum, lemon and no sugar, and was baptized with the name of Papa. In memory of his cordial presence and his fidelity to the House, a statue of the writer lies seated on one of the seats at the bar, the one he used.

It is also an oral legend, which is always repeated, that in the also famous Bodeguita del Medio, on Calle Empedrado, in Old Havana, a bohemian and tasty place like few others, its star cocktail was the mojito, which it considered incomparable.

The bar and restaurant Las Terrazas, in the town of Cojímar, today very comfortable, but which the famous writer visited when it was a humble fishermen's inn where they prepared the best-seasoned seafood in the city and its surroundings cannot be left on this flying list. Cojímar, a fishing community, and in the establishment, the dear big man conversed as a comrade with the fishermen, with a fraternity that moved them and they never forgot.

The Marina that today bears his name, a pier located to the west of Havana and which still organizes, from time to time, international marlin fishing tournaments, saw him at its facilities participating in its invitations since the 1950s and even at the beginning ofthe 60s, shortly before his death.

There is no doubt that Ernest Hemingway left a deep mark, with a very human and fraternal face, although also of literary importance. He deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, inspired by the hard work of a Cuban fisherman. He donated the medal to the Sanctuary of the Virgen of  Charity in El Cobre, Santiago de Cuba, although today it is not there for security reasons.