The hotel we had booked was the Plaza and it was a very lavish **** hotel on one of the main squares in Habana Vieja (old Havana). It was different to most as was on a corner and was a triangular shape giving it a little more character than the rest. Like most buildings in Cuba it was run down, clearly it had been restored or looked after but still had peeling paint and cracks and chips and other things of the sort all over the place. It was cool, not pristine which would have seemed very fake considering we are in Havana after all. The hotel was on five floors, the fifth having a large open roof, smaller closed off rooms and the breakfast suite. The view from up here isn't that great but its still a spectacular sight, I'm sure there are better views in Havana but this will do me nicely. You can see all of old Havana and some of central and a little beyond, the sea is on the horizon and the big canal and the docks are in the distance. Right next to the hotel is the old Bacardi Building, a grand art deco style building with elaborate detailing and a huge Bacardi bat on the top. The roof looks like a church steeple which I think lets the building down ever so slightly but it still looks fantastic. Bacardi is a Cuban rum, it is just that the family was exiled to Puerto rico for some reason so not many people believe that its Cuban.
On the second floor is our room, its a smallish double room with two big double beds, the room is about two thirds the size of the room I had in the Bahamas but it feels better, older, it yells history. The room has a balcony overlooking a small corner square that springs into a prostitutes heaven at night. For some reason the shower curtain is a painting of a woman's face, it is some Cuban artist and its a painting from the museum of fine art across the road. Also on the second floor is a place called the 'tea terrace' I can see why its called that, there are iron tables and chairs and big stained glass domes supplying light to the bar downstairs, but there is no tea being drunk there and it feels a little quiet and closed off from the rest of the hotel. I sat quiet, its not that quiet as there are two bird cages, one with parrots in and another full of canaries. If it was a little cooler here (weather I mean) it would be perfect for drinking a nice refreshing mug of Earl Grey, its just too hot and humid.
The bar is not the best I have seen or been in but the light shining through the stained glass gives a bright and colourful feel to it, and there is a huge fountain just off from the middle, it doesn't spray the water out, it just seems to dribble over the edges and the bottom tier has gold fish in it. The overall feel I'm getting from this hotel is of neglected grandeur.