CULTURE CLASH IN CUBA
ITINERARY
FAN TOUR
April 24-29, 2025
Meet at Havana International Airport
When you arrive in Havana, you will pass through customs, get your bags, and exit the airport. Don’t be alarmed if it takes a long time to get your luggage. Cuba has a slow x-ray system to scan all bags. When you exit the airport, you will be greeted by our Cuban tour guide, chauffeur, and U.S.-based tour leader who will be holding a Culture Clash sign. We will gather outside the airport in groups according to arrival times and transfer to our Havana hotel.
DAY 1: THURSDAY, APRIL 24 | ¡BIENVENIDOS A CUBA!
A smooth arrival in Havana
Transfer to Havana
During the drive, our travel staff will introduce themselves and orient you with information about Havana.
Arrive at our accommodations and check in to your rooms
We will be staying in Havana’s newest hotel, MGM Gran Muthu Habana, a modern 5-star hotel in the upscale Miramar neighborhood. It offers stunning views of the Caribbean Sea, and it's conveniently close to Fifth Avenue. Enjoy a range of amenities including several restaurants and bars, a gym, spa, pool, and a large terrace overlooking the sea.
Gran Muthu Habana
7:30 pm ~ Welcome dinner with Culture Clash and live music
Begin our experience in Havana with an opening dinner at Restaurante Antojos in Old Havana, joined by the members of Culture Clash. Antojos is a vibrant, must-visit restaurant nestled in Espada Alley on the edge of Habana Vieja. Known for its lively atmosphere, red parasols, and live music, Antojos offers a top-tier dining experience with classic Cuban dishes like croquettes and ropa vieja, alongside an impressive selection of handcrafted cocktails.
Restaurante Antojos
DAY 2: FRIDAY, APRIL 25 | HABANA VIEJA
Breakfast at our hotel
Wake up to a typical Cuban breakfast buffet of strong Cuban coffee served with fresh tropical fruit, eggs, toast, cheese, ham, and freshly squeezed juice.
Daily deluxe breakfast buffet at hotel
10:00 am ~ Four Plazas Habana Vieja Walking Tour
We will get to know the historic core of Havana, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where one can find extraordinary Colonial architecture, both well preserved and decayed, many galleries, contemporary centers, and boutique museums, and little shops. Starting at the Plaza Vieja we can see a couple exhibits of contemporary Cuban art at two of Havana’s most important contemporary art centers, El Centro del Desarollo de Arte Contemporánea and la Fototeca de Cuba. Continue down Calle Los Mercaderes to la Plaza de las Armas, Havana’s first square and origin point of the city’s settlement.
Old Havana walking tour
12:30 pm ~ Lunch at Paladar Los Mercaderes
We’ll stroll down the oldest street in Havana, Calle de los Mercaderes (Merchants Street), to have lunch in a beautiful restaurant built inside the home of the owner.
Paladar Los Mercaderes
2:00 pm ~ Open Rehearsal with Culture Clash
The group will sit in on a rehearsal of Culture Clash collaborating with Cuban actors.
Culture Clash rehearsal
4:00 pm ~ Time at Leisure
Continue exploring Old Havana or return to the hotel to recharge your batteries, go for a swim, or take a siesta.
Scenes of Old Havana
7:30 pm ~ Dinner at La Guarida
Anyone who has been to La Guarida will find it difficult to disagree that Enrique and Odeisys have managed to create their own magical home restaurant. The building, originally known as La Mansión Camagüey, shows its former grandeur from the magnificent wooden entrance door through the marble staircase up the two flights of stairs to the restaurant itself. The location for a classic scene from Cuba’s most iconic film “Fresa y Chocolate,” La Guarida has gone on to become one of the most popular restaurants in Cuba. On the menu is a choice of squash soup, eggplant caviar, or smoked marlin tacos for a starter; fish, chicken, or pork for the main course with sides of rice, black beans, fried yuca and plantains; and a cocktail, spring water, and coffee for dessert.
La Guarida
9:00 pm ~ Rooftop Concert of Luís Barbería at La Guarida Sessions
For a break from jazz music, we recommend seeing Luís Barbería at the hottest new music scene in Havana on this rooftop patio. A longtime staple of Cuban folk/rock songwriting, Barbería will perform in a beautiful plein air setting with the city skyline all around.
La Guarida rooftop concert
DAY 3: SATURDAY, APRIL 26 | HAVANA
Breakfast at our hotel
Wake up to a typical Cuban home-cooked breakfast of strong Cuban coffee served with fresh tropical fruit, eggs, toast, cheese, ham, and freshly squeezed juice.
Daily Cuban breakfast
9:30 am ~ Discussion: The Cuban Political Economy with Marc Frank
Marc Frank is a well-known American author and journalist who has been living in Cuba with his family since 1993. He will tell us about how Cuba’s planned economy and political system works and doesn’t work and what changes the state is working on for the future with their new constitution, new currency system, and many post-pandemic challenges. Marc Frank is the leading economic correspondent to Cuba for Thomson Reuters.
Cuba’s political-economy
11:30 am ~ Ernest Hemingway’s Finca Vigía
Visit the hilltop house of American writer Ernest Hemingway where he lived from 1940 – 1960 with his wife, Martha Gellhorn, and their children. Cuba was Hemingway’s most frequented country where he wrote the Old Man and the Sea, To Have and Have Not, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway donated his Nobel Prize to the Cuban people. His home in San Francisco de Paula has recently been the subject of a massive preservation effort by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. At this farm you will see his sport fishing boat, the Pilar. The Finca Vigia estate and the fishing village of Cojimar are considered the most significant locales for those interested in Hemingway’s history.
Hemingway’s house
1:00 pm ~ Lunch at Ivan Chef Justo
We’ll have lunch at a nearby restaurant run by Fidel Castro’s former primary personal chef. The style of this paladar is thoroughly Cuban-Mediterranean, located on the second and third floors of a building that is over 200 years old. The food is nothing short of spectacular.
Lunch at Ivan Chef Justo
3:00 pm ~ Time at Leisure to relax our explore Havana on your own
Return to the hotel, recharge your batteries, check email, explore Havana on your own, or take a siesta. Be ready in the lobby at 4:30 to leave for the symposium.
Exploring Havana
5:00 pm ~ Symposium on La Fábrica de Arte Cubano (FAC)
We will participate in a presentation to the Havana Arts Community and the general public about elements of Chicano Culture through a set of remarks and illustrations provided by Culture Clash to provide a better understanding of this unique American culture. The troupe will ask for audience participation to include attendants in a conversation.
Culture Clash symposium on Chicano and Cuban Theatre
7:00 pm ~ Private Tour of Fábrica de Arte
Enjoy an exclusive private tour of Fábrica de Arte, Havana's renowned cultural hub, where contemporary art, music, and dance come together in a vibrant, creative space.
Cuban Art Factory
8:00 pm ~ Comedy dinner party with live music at Habana Light Neon Studios
Project Por Amor’s Habana Light Neon Studios is dedicated to restoring Havana’s iconic neon lighting, reviving the city's vibrant past by bringing historic neon signs back to life, blending art, heritage, and urban renewal. Have dinner with Culture Clash and Cuban neon artist Kadir Lopez
Dinner party at Habana Light neon studio
DAY 4: SUNDAY, APRIL 27 | HAVANA
Breakfast at our hotel
Wake up to a typical Cuban breakfast buffet of strong Cuban coffee served with fresh tropical fruit, eggs, toast, cheese, ham, and freshly squeezed juice.
10:00 am ~ Partagás cigar factory tour
The Partagás Factory is on the corner of Calle San Carlos in Central Havana, about a block down from the Romeo y Julieta factory. According to local histories, the factory has been home to other cigar brands over the decades such as the El Rey del Mundo Factory, La Gloria Cubana, Ramon Allones, Quai d'Orsay, and Bolivar cigars. The factory employs 400 people with space on the rolling floor for nearly 240 to produce about 20,000 cigars daily. Windows in a long row reach from waist height to the ceiling. Rollers receive their carefully portioned leaves for their blends from a storeroom at the front. A small quality-control area sits off to the side, where draw machines test the finished product for the day. As in all Cuban cigar factories, a podium is set up for a lector who reads the news to workers from 9 to 9:30 a.m. Two half-hour-long periods later in the day are devoted to novelas, or fiction books, of the workers' choosing.
Scenes at Partagás cigar factory
11:00 am ~ Capitolio neighborhood walking tour
We’ll introduce ourselves to Havana by getting to know its most grand neighborhood. El Prado is one of the most exquisitely designed major avenues in all the Americas and home to the quintessential structures that define Havana, ranging from Colonial to Baroque to Neoclassical to Art Deco. Designed in 1772 by French landscape architect Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier, El Prado runs for many blocks from the dramatic fountain, La Fuente de la India, to the iconic Malecon, marking the boundary between Habana Vieja and Centro Habana. El Paseo, a marble promenade lined with a natural canopy of trees, marble benches and bronze lions was chosen by the House of Chanel for one of the most dramatic runway shows in the history of fashion. It is home to El Capitolio (1929): El Gran Teatro de La Habana (1918), home to the National Ballet of Cuba; The Bacardi Building (1930), a testament to Art Deco and dozens of other structures immortalized in photography and film for decades. El Prado encompasses all the cultural wealth that Havana has offered from the 17th to the 20th Century.
Capitolio and Paseo de Prado
12:30 pm ~ Lunch at Yarini
In the middle of the Havana port area, in San Isidro, is located Yarini Habana, a contemporary-style restaurant. Experience great food, drinks, live music, and outdoor atmosphere in this Havana hip artist enclave. It's is named after a mythical personality of the neighborhood a hundred years prior: a well-known young politician and islander pimp named Alberto Yarini Ponce de León.
Lunch at Yarini
2:30 pm ~ Ferry ride to Regla
Take the people’s ferry across the Havana Bay to a neighborhood on the other side called Regla.
3:00 pm ~ Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Regla
Begin at the legendary church with the black Madonna and statues of many of the Catholic saints who represent "Orishas" in the Yoruba tradition. Famous for its devotion by the large Santería community in Havana, there is probably no better public place to see the layering and transference between Catholic beliefs and African traditions. It's located in a primarily Afro-Cuban industrial neighborhood across the Havana Bay with a panoramic view of Old Havana.
Afro-Cuban church in Regla
3:30 pm ~ Mojitos at Centro Bahia
We will visit one of Havana’s newest artist-run centers led by contemporary Cuban artist, Felipe Dulzaides. This center was the key organization that backed the restoration of the neighborhood of Regla’s only surviving neón sign in May 2022.
Cuban Mojitos at Bahia cultural center
4:30 pm ~ Time at Leisure
Explore Havana on your own or return to the hotel to recharge your batteries, go for a swim, take a siesta, explore Havana, or go shopping. Be in the hotel lobby ready to depart by 7:30 pm.
Exploring Havana
Optional: Havana Shopping Tour: Artisan Market, Clandestina, Dador, Alma Shop
For those of you who are interested, we’ll take you to a selection of the most interesting and highest quality Cuban designers and artisans. This is the best time to find a piece of Cuba to bring home with you for gifts or memories and support small Cuban entrepreneurs. Clandestina is a wildly popular all-female design studio that makes hip and innovative products that reflect social concepts of today’s Cuba. The Almacenes San José is a huge artisan market of sprawling kiosks where hundreds of handmade souvenirs can be haggled for. Alma Shop is a smaller artisan shop with perhaps higher taste and quality.
Shopping in Havana
7:00 pm ~ Classic Convertible Scenic Car Ride
Leaving from our hotels, we will travel to our final dinner “Havana Style” in a fleet of specially selected 1950s American convertibles that will take us on a scenic route through Havana’s most beautiful neighborhoods.
Classic 1950s convertibles
8:00 pm ~ Dinner at Tierra
Tierra is just as much about the Havana arts scene as it is about food. Built into the VIP section of the Cuban Art Factory built out of recycled shipping containers. This paladar pushes the limits of private industry and government cooperation in a 100-year-old previously abandoned cooking oil factory along the Almendares River between the Vedado and Miramar neighborhoods. We’ll enter through the front door of the FAC and get to skip the long lines that typically go around the block.
Tierra Paladar
9:00 pm ~ Culture Clash Performance at Fábrica de Arte Cubano
Culture Clash will perform an adaptation of one of their original works arising from the group’s interactions with Cuban actors in Havana. Two performances will be presented before live audiences in Havana.
Culture Clash performance
10:00 pm ~ Reception with Culture Clash
We will share a round of drinks with the performance troupe to celebrate their Cuban premiere.
Reception with the artists
DAY 5: MONDAY, APRIL 28 | MATANZAS
Breakfast at our hotel
Wake up to a typical Cuban home-cooked breakfast of strong Cuban coffee served with fresh tropical fruit, eggs, toast, cheese, ham, and freshly squeezed juice.
9:00 am ~ Depart for Matanzas
Known for its poets, culture, and Afro-Cuban folklore, Matanzas is located on a bay on the northern shore of Cuba 90 kilometers east of Havana. It is called the City of Bridges, or the "Venice of Cuba," for the seventeen bridges that cross the three rivers that traverse the city. It was also called "La Atenas de Cuba" ("The Athens of Cuba") for its poets. Matanzas is known as the birthplace of the music and dance traditions danzón and rumba.
Scenes of Matanzas
11:00 am ~ Visit the Castle of San Severino
This castle, with its authentic central square, has great views of the Bahía de Matanzas thanks to its excellent location. It now houses the Museo de la Ruta de los Esclavos, a fascinating place to learn about Afro-Cuban history, traditions, and languages and how they transcended into the Caribbean and the Americas.
12:30 pm ~ Traditional Cuban Pig Roast Party with Live Rumba
Celebrate life the Cuban way with a traditional pig roast. Joining us will be a legendary rumba group, Afrocuba, who will demonstrate the guaguancó, columbia, and yambú music and dance.
Afrocuba rumba group & traditional Cuban pig roast
3:00 pm ~ City Tour of Matanzas and riverfront walk
Visit the Plaza de la Vigía, Sauto Theater, Pedro Esquerré Gallery, hotel Amigos del Danzón, Calle Medio, ACAA, hotel del Danzón, Cathedral, and Pharmaceutical Museum. after take a stroll along the Yumuri River and visit cafes and art galleries.
4:30 pm ~ Departure to Havana
Bridge to Matanzas
7:30 pm ~ Final dinner at El Del Frente
We will enjoy enjoy a delicious final dinner and expertly crafted cocktails on the spacious rooftop terrace of El Del Frente, while taking in the historic architecture of Old Havana beneath a tropical sky.
Dinner at El Del Frente
DAY 6: TUESDAY, APRIL 29 | ADIOS HAVANA
Breakfast at our hotel
Wake up to a typical Cuban breakfast spread of eggs, fruit, breads, ham, cheese, juice, and many other selections. The buffet is open daily from 7:00 - 10:00 am.
Transfer to José Martí International Airport
We will shuttle people to the airport in small groups according to departure times. You will be assisted through check in and customs.
Flights Depart Havana for Home Cities
Please Note: Cuba remains a developing country and guests traveling here should adjust their expectations accordingly. Traveling to Cuba on a cultural exchange is quite unlike journeying to other destinations. Infrastructure breakdowns commonly occur and flexibility and patience on the part of visitors is a must.