We stayed in the Varadero area of Cuba. Varadero is a town, a peninsula, and a popular resort destination. Our resort was called Sirenis La Salina, and it was rated with four stars. It was towards the end of the peninsula, a little ways away from the town, but we could get to town on the Red Double Decker Bus - a fun adventure.
These are a couple pictures of prominent/interesting places in our resort: the lobby, a pretty flower tree, and the pool. Well, one of the pools; there were two. This is the Activity Pool (waterslide on the right hand side, afternoon burgers and a swim-up bar on the left); the Quiet Pool was a few minutes away. As aesthetically pleasing as the pool was, I didn't swim in it at all or even lounge by it once. I opted for the beach and the ocean instead. As well as being more of a novelty for us, there was more shade there.
This was what I called "home" for the week. There were many such buildings around the property, and we liked that atmosphere compared to resorts that had one massive building. We were situated close to the beach and the Activity Pool, but far from the lobby and the buffet. (We did a lot of walking to get around - our resort covered a lot of area.) Our room was on the first floor of this building, on the far left. We generally entered from the balcony door, since that didn't lock and the main door locked automatically. We only had two keys for the three of us, and one of them was required to turn on the lights in our room so it was easiest to leave it there. (That's right - no electricity without a key in the appropriate slot. That was an adventure to figure out the first night when we got there.) The center picture shows the inside of our room. I liked the bright yellow and blue. We tipped our maids well, and they thanked us with towel sculptures.
Some of the staff of our resort were really outstanding. The omelet lady drew my admiration. Every morning she made omelets to order for a line-up of people with a big smile on her face, standing over a hot grill in weather that was already becoming uncomfortably hot. I tended to like the people I saw regularly, like the bartender at the theatre in the evenings who filled our water and made us pina colodas. And I really really liked the people who seemed like they recognized us after seeing us a time or two. One of the waitresses at the buffet and another at the snack bar gave us greetings with a tinge of recognition when we went there. And another waitress at the buffet at breakfast astounded me when, on the second morning she helped us, asked, "three orange juice and a coffee?" - what we had requested for beverages the morning before. She remembered - not just us but what we wanted! It made me realize, though, what an emotionally hard job tourism would be. People constantly come in and out of your life, staying for only a week or maybe two at at time.
One downfall of our resort, which affected our experience of Cuba in general, was the food. It wasn't great. Even the fruit, which we expected to be amazing because we were in the Caribbean, was disappointing. Much of it was canned (canned strawberries, ick), and what was fresh was really pale (white pineapple?) and low on flavor. Most of the desserts plainly tasted like sugar. French fries became a staple of many of our meals. When we talked to people from other resorts, most of them said similar things. We started to look forward to chances to have meals off of the resort (we had an amazing lunch in Havana, showing us that there is the possibility of good food in Cuba). The a-la-cartes at our resort were a lot better than the buffet, but although there were six a-la-carte restaurants, we were limited to two reservations over the week. People say that everyone gains weight on all-inclusive vacations like this, but with the less-than-appetizing food and with all the walking our experience didn't exactly go that way.
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