Driving through Havana’s parks, contemporary statues honored the revolution’s leaders and America’s President Lincoln.

In Havana we walked the Malecon, an esplanade where locals gather. From our hotel we looked down on a broad open expanse by the Malecon, where the casinos had once stood and been torn down in the revolution.

We visited iconic Hotel Nacional de Cuba, overlooking the Malecon.

Of course we went to the famous Tropicana Cabaret, an open-air nightclub in existence since 1939.

We were brought to an original cigar making factory. The manager, a woman, introduced us to all the people rolling tobacco. We were brought to a rum distributor.

We walked the historic areas where grand houses, much like those in downtown Charleston, had once been single family homes, but were now tenements with dozens of people.

This was a period in which the government was permitting small private restaurants, called paladares and we climbed up three flights in a grand and decaying mansion to an intimate restaurant where we were served a fine meal. One of the people in our tour group was a young woman who was physically challenged, and one of the men in the group lifted her on his shoulders and carried her up to the third-floor restaurant. Walking in Havana meant encountering streets under reconstruction, and buildings, whose facades were held by secure pillars, with nothing left to the mansion but the façade. In our meeting with one architect we learned that there was then an ongoing debate about repair of these remarkable buildings, since the cost of reconstruction was prohibitive, but the architect assured us that they are opposed to tearing them down and replacing them with unappealing modern buildings. Heritage was repeatedly stressed. Throughout the city, streets were being conserved by laying cobblestones. The walk to the former exchange building was a prominent example.