There are rules, you see. You can’t go except on a special Visa. MSC has set up their excursions to qualify as Person-to-Person educational experiences. As long as you do 2 of their excursions, we can sort of do whatever all else and still have qualified.
We signed up for 3. Two today – day and evening, and one tomorrow before we sail away.
We have a brief discussion about changing our excursions. Should we skip the one today and get off the ship earlier if we can? Our excursion doesn’t leave until 1:30 – what time are we to arrive in port?
Scheduled arrival is 1pm. We are not going to do better than that.
We actually sail into the harbor a bit early, the old city drifting by us on one side, El Morro (Morro Castle) off the other side.
I poke S and when she turns I point at it and say, excitedly, Cuba.
Bless her, she laughs every time I do it. Which will be often.
The line through security is of course interminable. To be expected, really. Our pictures are taken, probably facial recognition and the like. A few people are sent back to the ship, rejected, we never learn why or whether they were just sent back for paperwork they’d forgotten. Traveling with passport in tow is my forte though and eventually we are through the check at the port and lining up to join our tour of Havana.
aka gringita 