(Vedado, Cuba) ... Fidel Castro's country is a magnet for travellers. It remains mysterious, old-fashioned, energetic and – for many – forbidden. Restrictions from the U.S. (and anyone who has U.S. visa/passport/residence connections with that country) are easing, and very recently, the Cubans began to allow its citizens to leave, despite the process remaining tightly controlled.
Havana, its capital has three main sections – La Habana Vieja, La Habana Central and Vedado, the westernmost of the three. It ends at the Río Almendares, a wood-sided river of herons, rowboats, political graffiti and litter. At the small park Anfiteatro Parque Almendares, there were a small zoo and a circular bar, a wonderful spot to avoid the heat. I have read that this stretch of Havana is dangerous.
We stayed on Calle 28 – even-numbered streets cross odd-numbered ones, so Calle 28 would not have a junction with Calle 26, for instance – at the incredible house of a very interesting man who was a former soldier and headed up one of the committees that was responsible for something very technical and complicated in regards to the retrieval and transport to Cuba of the long-buried body of Che Guevara from Bolivia. Even the lanes between tombs in the main cemetery, also in Vedado, keep to this system, even though Calle 16 at the cemetery veers off Calle 16 outside of it at an angle of 45 degrees, as though an earthquake had picked up and moved all the dead.
The house we slept in was three stories high, and at the back were two rooms for travellers. These are called casas particulares. The regulations state that householders are allowed to rent out two rooms per house if those rooms have a shower. Breakfast can be served, but not lunch or dinner, as this would eat into the government’s near-monopoly on restaurants. Outside of Havana, casas particulares can add dinner. Inside the main house all was old – nearly all permanently stuck in 1959 – and there was a grand piano and a table that looked like it might have been brought over on a galleon from Imperial Spain.
We had brought over some baby clothes, knowing that the owner’s daughter – who taught salsa dancing and had been to Spain and Argentina – just gave birth to her first child and thinking this was more sensible than bringing Levis, and also therefore not being open to criticism that we assumed everyone wanted these things and, besides, did not have them already – the first thing I saw in the house was a huge Mac computer system, a rack of guitars and a massive amplifier. The child’s father was an accomplished musician. There was no poverty here.
Another house on the same street that we stayed in at the end of our trip was a veritable Art Deco masterpiece, with delicate flowers painted in bright red on the walls and a hummingbird sat on its nest in a low branch of a tree in the back garden. I was scared to touch anything – whatever breaks cannot be replaced.
We spent a lot of time in this first house – a destination in itself – chatting. When we wanted to go to La Habana Vieja, we walked one block to the main Avenida 23 and hailed a 1950's American car for which the city is celebrated and further polluted. Vedado also is the right place to get to the incredibly out-of-the-way bus company – Viazul – on the junction of avenidas 26 and Zoológico. It is the cheap way to get to places such as Viñales to the east, on donated, comfortable Chinese buses, where Cuba’s famous cigars hail amid limestone sugarloafs called mogotes, and Trinidad to the southeast, a small city where the old Cuban way of life (yes, controlled, with tourists using CUCs (Cuban convertible pesos) and nearly everyone else using regular pesos) is not even remotely snuffed out by tourism.
On the corner of calles 30 and 27, or perhaps 29, there was a small market with half a roof that was a photographer’s dream of dappled light, weathered faces, government dogma and unrecognisable packaging. Further along Calle 26 at Calle 31 is a Chinese cemetery that had no attendant and no other visitors. It is the resting place of a people who by the large all left when the revolution came. Looking at Havana faces, you can still see slight signs of their bloodlines. We did not meet any Chinese, but we did meet a fairly obnoxious Ghanaian doctor, a young man who claimed that he received his medical education in Cuba in exchange for five years of unpaid service. This sounded plausible. I forget his name, but he was walking around Habana Vieja with a nurse, who he said was a friend but evidently was not. We bought them drinks, and the woman, Eliza, was very sweet. We were invited to her house, too, so bought a bottle of rum. The condition of the house beggared belief. It was clean, but the door had no lock, the bed was shared with her three children and I was glad I did not need to use the “toilet,” which was just a hole with no flush behind a curtain and populated by maggots.

(Japan)...Japanese spa hotels, or ryokans, are wonderful things. The rooms are spare but peaceful. Eight mats in a uniform grid pattern surround a low table, where green tea is served on arrival. An anteroom, or sunroom, is behind it, which is narrower but usually situated by a large window overlooking a classical Japanese garden. It contains another low table, often with a sunken pit so legs can dangle comfortably, and some rugs for warmth. Little spoils the walls. A yakuta, or summer kimono, is neatly placed on a low chair. These are what guests wear while in attendance at the single-sex onsen, or hot baths, and at dinners served by staff also wearing kimonos, which are probably more elegant than guests’. Dinners last several hours and involve multiple dishes. Those able to sit cross-legged for extended periods—not your author—fare better. This is all a wonderful entry into Japanese culture, and recently I found a small hotel chain, Hoshinoya that has tried to mix this traditional way of life with more Westernized traits. For instance, shoes are allowed in most of the public areas (but not the guest rooms), and there is a choice of Japanese, continental and American breakfasts. All said, its hotels—including two hotels planned to open in Mount Fuji and Okinawa—still retain a decidedly Japanese feel.
The Hoshinoya hotel in Kyoto is a dream. Approximately 290 miles west of Tokyo in the Arashiyama district of Kyoto (many of this famed city’s shrines and bamboo glades are in this area), the hotel is accessed by boat from the Oigawa River. A narrow road does go there, too, but the gate to the hotel is blocked, and guests may get the distinct feel of being transported to another world. Children under 12 years old are not permitted. The guest rooms feel Japanese, but there are Western beds and not the usual Japanese futon-style beds that replace the dining table after dinner is finished. Quite often ryokans have poor bathrooms, as guests rarely use these, preferring the communal hot springs that have full washing facilities as well as a cultural immersion (pun intended) that is hard to beat. The hotel itself has 25 rooms that are laid out along a single path of pools, waterfalls and greenery. A common lounge has a public computer, Wi-Fi access, books, coffee and sofas. Guests also have the opportunity to attend tea and incense ceremonies, dressed of course in the yakuta. Small, hidden dining rooms provide another Japanese infusion, and the regional menu does contain some Western hints. The main goal here, though, is just to relax. Temminck’s cormorant, American wigeon, Common pochard and Eastern spot-billed ducks patrol the river, seen from all rooms, or at least they do in February. On the outside of the small front gate and up the hill is the Daihikaku Senkoji temple, built by Suminokura Ryoi, a rich merchant, in the 16th Century. It was closed when I was there, but supposedly the views of Kyoto from it are superb.
The other Hoshinoya hotel is close to the small city of Karuizawa, 100 miles northwest of Tokyo. In winter, the hotel acts as a skiing resort and caters more to families. At this Hoshinoya hotel, everyone is allowed. Indeed, there is even a children’s playroom off the long, thin lounge, which contains books, sofas, coffee and regularly resupplied cookies. The dining room here is larger and has those sunken pits for ease of sitting. Meals here were decidedly Japanese. The hotel’s grounds are sprawling, attractive and surround the 77 villas for 231 guests. Staff row across the large pool to light floating lanterns, and the artificial but pretty waterways generate 30 percent of the resort’s power. A path leads down to an onsen that is free for guests but also used by locals and other vacationers.
One particularly wonderful activity here is stargazing. Guests are driven to a point high in the hills (the area is a nature preserve famed for its birdlife and bears are known, too) where they bury themselves into thick sleeping bags laid on a fancy, round cot and are given binoculars and a hot-water bottle. The hardest thing might be not falling asleep. A guide points out the firmament’s constellations, armed with an iPad for those who cannot find Andromeda, Cassiopeia and Orion, etc. When I visited, both Venus and Jupiter shone brightly, and a telescope showed three of Saturn’s moons. When I traipsed back to this spot in the morning, the stars were gone, but in its place was a tremendous view of Mount Asama, an active volcano that caused a little damage in 2009. Both the Hoshinoya hotels are idyllic escapes and well recommended. Both can be reached by Japan’s famous bullet trains. I loved the fact that on these (and this is probably a common occurrence throughout polite Japan) the conductors and food-cart vendors turn around when they reach the end of the carriage and bow to the passengers who they are about to leave behind.