We wanted to take our son to see Cuba. It was everything we had hoped and more. I had read all the reviews before we sailed so we had an idea of what to expect. We took one NCL excursion and then took a local carriage ride around the city on the second day. A couple tips, on the fist day the line to exchange money was long we skipped that and went to a local bank instead with no problems. There are several banks within a block or two of the port. Before we took our first excursion we decided to walk around on our own. Everyone was nice, but some were a little over the top trying to sell us some cigars. They invite you into their homes to try and sell "discounted" cigars. It was a little crazy. We traded hats on the street and had people try to trade shirts with us as well.

On our trip we brought pens,pencils,soaps and Rosaries to give away. One of our tour guides had said toothbrushes and toothpaste would have been great as well. Everyone was very grateful of what we could give. The only issue we had was when going through immigration the bag of soap was so large that they wanted to inspect it and made me leave most of it with them.

We had so many interesting things we came across its hard to tell them all in this review. I recommend to take the "highlights of Havana" tour through NCL and when you have time across from the port look for Jaoquin with the carriage tours, he has carriage #24, great guide! We really enjoyed our trip and everyone we talked to on the ship seemed to enjoy it as well even though we all had different experiences. Read more