“It’s good to have an end to journey to,” wrote Ernest Hemingway, “but it’s the journey that matters in the end.”

I wonder if Hemingway wrote it with his travels to his much-loved Havana in mind. He spent almost 20 years there. Whenever we go we spend some time in Havana, in the old city — La Habana Vieja — where the room Hemingway stayed in is just as he left it in a hotel called Ambos Mundos. It’s on the fifth floor, as austere as the prose of For Whom the Bell Tolls which he started there in the late 1930s.

To me, it’s odd that many Canadians (nearing a million a year, far more than any country) often go to Cuba but not Havana. It’s the most beautiful city in the entire Caribbean, an aged beauty, and while the poverty of the Castro years shows in broken sidewalks, its public buildings and timeless mansions give credence to its description as a place of “fading glory.” Moreover, it’s set on the edge of a sweeping blue bay, from which gentle winds lend a balmy scent to its air, where the temperatures this time of year are always pleasant, averaging about 22 C.

About two million people live in Havana, many in poverty but now feeling hope, given Cuba’s decision to allow the market economy a foot in the socialist door. A man recently told a TV reporter how pleased he was now that he owned a fast-food café — he couldn’t live on what he previously made as a physician.

The city also has improved its culinary appeal, vegetables fresher, meats more tender. We’ve visited Havana on a day excursion from nearby Varadero. But last time we stayed in Havana at The Parque Central, which is also in the heart of Havana, with a rooftop pool and a view unmatched: the gleaming capital building and ageless aristocratic apartments.

Among things to do, I commend three:

An Old Havana Walk: Every hotel desk arranges them, and if you’re at Parque Central, you’re at the doorway to a tour of 4 kilometres. The city’s an architectural jewel, lingering for centuries in cathedrals and convents, plazas and palaces, columned squares and classical mansions. Give yourself at least three hours for what I called in my notebook: “an unsurpassed banquet for the eye.”

Night Time: Havana is a city where the girls out for a walk wear T-shirts emblazoned with “I just did it.” (It’s not, well, Presbyterian by background.) So, as journalists who have to observe life just as it is, Barbara and I took in a show at the city’s famous Tropicana Club. It’s worth seeing — a professional revue with dancing, singing chorus girls. I was told that once the girls were bare-breasted but a Castro socialist bureaucrat put a stop to it. (He may have changed his mind by now.)

Papa Hemingway’s Home: Around 1940, Hemingway, feeling flush after a book sold, bought a house, a half-hour from Havana and lived there for about twenty years. It’s Finca Vigia, immaculately preserved for visitors. You can’t enter, but since the windows are wide you’ll view inside thoroughly: the study with hundreds of his books; a military uniform hanging as if he just took it off. But the dining room really caught my eye, since it made me think he was about to pour another drink.

Special to The Hamilton Spectator

If you go

Most travel agents offer all-inclusive visits to Cuba. The Parque Central and other Havana hotels are marketed on a flight and hotel basis with breakfast included.