La Guarida, Centro Habana, Cuba. February, 2012

Enter this small, crumbling courtyard during the day and you’re likely to meet a variety of neighborhood types hanging out, chatting. And because they’re Cubans, they kindly included me in their conversations. One young man told me he had a magazine that featured this staircase I’d just photographed. Did I want to see it? A woman who unofficially sits guard all day told me she thought my Spanish was good. (At least that’s what I think she said.) A man wanted to know about my life in the Estados Unidos. Return at night, and you’ll be able to eat at the famed paladar La Guarida on the top floor, often called the best restaurant in Cuba, frequented by such luminaries as Sean Penn and Queen Sofia of Spain. And, if you adjust your standards accordingly, by such luminaries as my friends Patti and Jeannie and I. We didn’t only come for the fine food, but because La Guarida occupies the apartment in which the excellent Cuban movie Fresa y Chocolate was filmed. See it.