We landed in Havana airport approximately 10 minutes before a tropical storm hit, phew. The baggage collection was the first part of Cuban craziness that we encountered. There were hauds of people waiting for luggage, exacerbated by three flights of luggage being on one carousel, but mainly because all the Cubans had clearly been shopping elsewhere for things they can't get in Cuba. Each person had at least one trolley stacked up with boxes and boxes of goods. After an hour, our beloved bags appeared.

Thoroughly exhausted from the journey and overwhelmingly jet lagged we had a nap as soon as we made it to the hotel. At around 6pm we dragged ourselves out of bed and decided we would grab a very quick dinner before getting an early night. We headed to a nearby square and saw a couple of restaurants with people eating outside and so headed towards them. We avoided the first one as it was a bit pricey so we decided to check out the second. It's a good job we did as who was sat outside enjoying a cocktail but Greg's friend from school Jimmy and his brand new fiancé Aurora! And so what was intended to be a quick dinner and bed turned into dinner, multiple cocktails, tickets to the Buena Vista club (one of the most popular Cuban music shows in town) and a serious hangover! At least it sorted the jet lag out.

You can't help but look at Havana with sorrow. The town is filled with big, grand, ornate ancient buildings that once would have been five star venues, palaces and meeting halls. Now, those that remain stand in great disrepair, with collapsed walls and ceilings. Patches of scaffolding symbolising failed attempts at restoration. The Capitol building, where parliament was previously housed, for example, has remained empty with scaffolding covering its dome for some seven years, with no progress made. As a communist state, everyone works for the government, meaning no one works for their own gain. This has led to what we have experienced as a general disinterest in their job. Work men stand motionless beside dug up roads and service in hotels and restaurants is seldom with a smile. There are national security people who guard the town's buildings, these along with the police have a bizarre outfit, one you would expect to find on a budget strip-o-gram in the UK, incredibly tight and often paired with fishnet tights. On one occasion we came across two of these individuals courting in the middle of the street, it's like being in the early scenes of a budget porno.

We were staying in a hotel that once was a monastery and it still had some of its interesting features, including an open rainwater well in the central courtyard and huge old wooden doors. Along with the theme, all the staff wore monks robes and copper statues of monks were scattered around the building. It seemed that it also doubled as a tourist attraction as we often bumped into tour groups in the reception area. Although interesting, the windowless room was somewhat dark and rustic, with no hot water.

We had grand sightseeing plans for our first full day in Havana. Unfortunately the events of the night before, coupled with Claire's gastrointestinal upset, meant the day was a little less productive. After a much needed post breakfast nap, we headed towards the cigar factory. On the way we were approached by multiple Cuban people, initially just chatting, but then this turned into trying to either sell us tickets to a show or take us somewhere to sell us cigars. When we were walking down a random street we were approached by a man who shook our hands and told us he worked at Los Frailes, the hotel we were staying at. He said we were the two new English guests and asked how our stay was going. We said we were looking for the cigar factory and he unfortunately told us it was closed today, but there was a market around the corner that sold cigars if we wanted to have a look. A market sounded interesting so we agreed and followed him around the corner. He led us up the stairs of a dilapidated house...now we became suspicious. Greg suddenly became very aware that our chances of being murdered had just increased dramatically. We were introduced to a young man who produced several boxes of very authentic looking cigars and given a brief selling pitch on each. When it became painfully obvious we had no intention of buying any cigars Greg's internal terror threat decreased from red to orange, i.e from murder to mugging. Claire seemed to have no awareness of this and was just exclaiming "but we don't want any cigars". To our relief at that point two other gullible white people appeared in the doorway behind us and we were issued with a short and pointed "ciao" and allowed to hurry off. We have since decided, as we have not seen that man at our hotel since, that the people who come up to you on the street must be in communication via mobile with information about tourists they've spoken to so they can approach them in this way. We now change the hotel we're staying at whenever we speak to someone (unfortunately speaking to people is unavoidable).

When we eventually found the cigar factory it was indeed closed for the afternoon so we had a quick look in the shop...cigars are expensive, before heading off. We wandered in the direction of the Revolution Museum, keen to learn all about the subject not having a real clue about it between us. The museum is in Batista's former presidential home and is filled with blood stained memorabilia from the triumphant revolution against the 'tyranny', as it is referred to. Unfortunately the majority of information was exclusively in Spanish with only the odd piece of English. We have decided that, once we have wifi (we are yet to find any at all) we will research the history and hopefully all the army uniforms, maps, blood soaked clothes and guns will then make sense!

Exhausted from the exploits of the night before and from our wandering in the midday sun we had a very quick dinner near the hotel and were both asleep before 8! When we were both up and down in the night at similar times we decided we may be more jet lagged than we originally thought. We have since calculated that Japan is 13 hours ahead of Cuba and so we have effectively done the New Zealand to UK journey again. Looks like we'll have odd sleeping patterns for a few more days to come!

Our second day in Havana was mainly spent doing our own walking tour around the old town, to the revolution square and to a craft market where everyone was our friend and promised us good prices. To kill an hour we decided to get a horse and cart ride, something both of us usually avoid when on holiday. We boarded the incredibly rickety cart and off we went, refusing multiple attempts by the guide to drag us into various venues to either sell us stuff or buy him a drink. An hour later our time was up, but we were on the opposite side of town to where we started, determined not to spend more than we had agreed, we hopped of and trudged our way back. Overall it was actually quite pleasant just sitting there watching the sights go by. We went to see the cathedral, which was a fair size and fairly well maintained given the surroundings. It turns out it had been boarded up until fairly recently, as religion was banned by Castro, the thinking being that people should look up to him instead of God. The pope has since visited and provided Cuba with supplies and some investment, and miraculously a few churches and this cathedral are now open. Near the cathedral is a square where there are book sellers, all the books are several years old and only seem to have a couple of topics; Che or Hemmingway.

In the afternoon we jumped in a taxi which took us across town to the Revolution Square. A large square with a monument in the centre to Cuba's founding father Jose Marti who drove their liberation from Spain. Two of the buildings overlooking the square have huge images of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos on them to inspire the people and keep the revolutionary spirit alive. The square is empty and only used for political rallies and visits by the pope. It didn't look like it had been used recently. From the square we wondered down some very hot streets in search of the coast. We were hoping to find the wall of flags which Fidel had erected to obscure some American propaganda (which Obama has since removed). We found the flagpoles, but unfortunately there were no flags on them. Not as impressive as we'd imagined! Nearby, however, was a small side street covered in crazy graffiti and meant to have rumba dancing. Sadly there was no dancing and we were accosted by two men who gave us a tour and tried to sell us their CD. The whole place was weird, like a courtyard made of junk painted in bright colours, we left fairly sharpish using Claire's gastrointestinal system as an excuse to the two men.

After the hassle and midday sun we retreated to our hotel to cool off in our dark room for a while. We relaxed in front of the TV (a combination of BBC news and Bridget Jones' Diary) for a couple of hours before heading back out for dinner. We went to a restaurant on the popular eating and drinking street and as soon as we sat down a girl from the next table came over and started a conversation based around places to eat. We're not sure if she wanted to invite us to dinner with her and her boyfriend or whether she wanted some drinks with us or was trying to warn us off the food where we were, we never established her intentions. Dinner was nice though.

The following day we moved hotel in preparation for our next tour. Our new hotel was next door to the Revolution Museum and was far more upmarket. We lounged by the pool all afternoon before having dinner and a few cocktails in the hotel bar. We spent the majority of our time eyeing up all the other guests, trying to predict who would be joining us the next day on the tour. We even managed to use wifi for half an hour - an unheard of luxury in Cuba.

In the morning we had our first group meeting and we immediately set about judging all books by their covers - the two witches, the family, the couple from Darlington, the Americans, the anorexic. The group consisted of 18 people, only three of which were male and the majority of whom were over the age of 60. Greg was not looking forward to the inevitable group wide hot flush. After the meeting we went on a walking tour of Havana where we retraced our steps from the previous two days but with the very useful addition of our tour guide which gave us a far better understanding of what we were seeing. After lunch we had a couple of hours to kill and we were fast running out of underwear. After enquiring about a laundry service at the hotel and finding it unbelievably expensive Greg set about washing all our pants in the bathroom sink using a bar of soap - the less glamorous side of travelling the world.

Late afternoon we re-grouped for a cocktail making class at Sloppy Joe's. This was less of a lesson and more of just getting free cocktails...three of them, all with generous portions of rum. By the time we went to change for dinner we were very merry. We ate dinner in a restaurant overlooking the river and then went to bed at, what felt like an incredibly late hour...10pm!