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Havana is a noisy, fast-paced city and its people have learned how to enjoy that. It’s a city where new opportunities come up. The Cuban capital shows off different faces: though mostly hectic during the day, at night those who live in this city or visit it just relax as much as they please

A Day of Challenges
The day does not kick off with the crowing of roosters. Other early noises make Havana a busy city since daybreak. That’s the way it has been since the 17th century, when its seaport began to make its case as one of the indispensable calls for Spanish fleets and many other ships that were sailing from nearest harbors. Even corsairs and pirates came here more than once.
A city that sleeps right in front of the sea and wakes up every day in a different way: the sun, the breeze and the waves don’t always caress as the day before. But rush is always the same. It is 7 a.m. and Havana is like an ant nest where honking cars join the sound of swing doors in schools, businesses and other workplaces. If you look at the faces of Havana residents at that moment, you won’t find an isolated thought, but thousands of brains interconnected, reviewing their agendas, planning the week ahead or outlining a project for the whole month, year or even a lifetime.
Over a million people go across the city on a daily basis, from north to south and from east to west, but it’s not a small city. It is not if stacked up against Sao Paulo, New York or Mexico City. Only a handful of Caribbean cities can hold a candle to those giants. Nevertheless, it is larger than Costa Rica’s San Jose and San Francisco, in California. Havana looks like Santo Domingo and Cartagena de Indias if we think about its historic areas, seawall promenades and the nice music played round the clock. These three cities are siblings in laughter and nostalgia for the sea.
Havana is a great venue for all sorts of events, from cultural ones that attract most of citizens and visitors, to the smallest or specialized events that show the diversity a country has to offer.

A Night under the Stars
Enjoying a sunset by the seawall is somewhat a symphonic poem. I’ve waited to see the sun come up over the Casablanca’s Christ and, many hours later, I’ve witnessed the glorious sunset on the other side of town, right behind the sea, making some wiggle room for the climbing moon. Other picture-perfect dusks in Havana can be enjoyed at La Torre bar-restaurant, right on top of the Focsa building, one of the city’s skyscrapers, where you can see how the city slowly lights up and traffic sings wink at you. In the meantime, the shroud of the night comes down leisurely over the streets. That’s the time when spaces change their colors, sounds others than those we overheard in broad daylight start blaring out, just making a new kind of environment slip under the tables at nightclubs.
The night turns this city into a different place from the one we walked just a few hours before. Drawing back the curtain in a theater, sniffing the smells of the sea, touching a close skin, feeling how the first drink goes down our throat and triggers desires, smiles and the intention to eat the city out. Now we’re ready to meet this different Havana, a nightly and enthralling town. We’re arriving in Paradise when a thunderous, dry and ancient bang can be heard.
The Havana nightlife tees off with a cannon shot fired at nine o’clock. It’s an old tradition that came into being back in the 17th century when the city was surrounded by walls. It used to be the signal that the gates of the walled city were about to be chained until daybreak in order to prevent crooks from sneaking in. One cannon shot still tells the time at nine o’clock. It’s the last moment you look at your watch because from that moment on time becomes a soft breeze that wafts out of the sea and goes down from the sky, making us dance, cross the streets, go down to the clubs and up to the restaurants and cafés.
We have to know how to plan our Havana nights. If we like cabarets, then Tropicana is a classic that rubs elbows with the Salón Rojo or Parisien Cabaret at the luxurious Hotel Nacional. But nights in such exclusive clubs as La Zorra y el Cuervo, where the best jazz in town is performed, are also luxurious. The options get multiplied at El Gato Tuerto, another club that stages, in one night, three different shows with the finest Cuban musicians. Afterwards, if we go along Linea Street, from the Seawall to the tunnel, we arrive in Miramar, which at night is no longer an area of embassies and trade offices, but rather the chicest place you can find. Former mansions of millionaires have been turned into fancy restaurants, clubs and discos.
Havana nights are tremendous. You only have to be willing to whoop it up and discover it… It’s a night under the sky, with revelations, made to be told in a whisper and lived to the limits. If there were no night, Havana would be just a sad city in front of the sea, marked by insolent waves and overwhelmed by daily life. Yet a strange light covers the people, draping the city’s colors and secrets under a bright and encouraging veil: the night will fall again and we’ll walk into her, home to the lack of moderation, a concert of pleasure we’re always invited to attend.