Cuba Day 7: Dickie Day

After some mishaps yesterday, we agreed that today, our last full day in Cuba, would be Dickie Day. I had been planning the itinerary and our daily activities, but today I would hand the reins over to Dick. At 9:00, Dickie Day was off to a good start:

At 10:00 Mike and Dickie rolled over at the same exact time:

By 11:30, they needed just 10 more minutes:

Dickie Day rules!

The first thing we did for Dickie Day was go to the wrong restaurant -- we noticed we weren't at the restaurant we thought we were about half way through lunch. But the food was still unbelievable which is why in Dickie we trust. Of course, we finished all of our several appetizers and four entrees between the three of us. The Round Trio grows rounder.

Next, Dickie, who we now referred to strictly as El Jefe, asked a shiny convertible to take us to one of the big cigar factories. The taximan countered with what seemed to me like a scam -- he said knows the people who work in the factories and smuggled cigars out at the end of their shifts. They live just down the block and would sell us nice cigars for half the price we could get at the factory. "Sure," Dickie said, and since he was El Jefe, to the scammer's house we went!

 We were greeted at the door by a man who was sick as a dog. Between sniffles, he invited us to have a seat in his lair. He coughed powerfully into his handkerchief. His single long pinky nail scraped across the table as he opened a box of questionably fake Cohibas and an accompanying box of Montecristos. His hazy eyes locked with mine as he tried to convince us that the cigars were authentic. One way he did so was to take a cigar out of the box up for sale and wrap his lips around it and taste it, inviting us to do the same. No. Way. This sick-as-a-dog lairman and his taximan partner had probably tasted every single one of these cigars they were trying to sell.

After we had our fill of shenanigans we caught a cab to the real cigar factory. Along the way we got "pooled", which is something that can happen in Cuban taxis. It's when you're going to your destination then the driver stops and without a word, three more people get into the taxi, and then you continue on your way. No matter. We made it to the cigar shop where, for a change, the salesmen were all in normal health.



Upon returning to our apartment later on, we discovered horrifically that there was no toilet paper left. A whole apartment for four days, and they gave us only one roll? Mike couldn't believe it. There had to be more somewhere in the apartment. But search as he may, he found nothing:



We frittered about, killing time and practicing martial arts before dinner. The dockside restaurant in the Miramar neighborhood served us thousands of camarones and enough pulpo to make our bellies explode. Then we went to a cabaret with an empty audience, as I suspect most cabaret audiences are on Monday nights, before turning in. Dickie Day was one fun, adventurous, very strange day!