After our stay in the UNESCO world heritage town, Trinidad, our next destination is Camaguey where we will spend the night over. Trinidad to Camaguey is approximately 3 hours and 45 minutes’ drive. I’ve planned our Cuban road trip in such a way that we will not be driving for long hours. What I did was I broke up our road trips with a lunch stop over in a new city or town. With this we are not wasting our holiday time driving on the road for hours, instead, we get to see more of Cuba and we get to discover a new place as well.
From Trinidad, we stopped by at another UNESCO world heritage site, Valle de los Ingenios (The Sugar Mills Valley) which luckily is along the main road and is just 15 minutes away. Afterwards we proceeded to Sancti Spiritus, the capital city of the Sancti Spiritus province which Trinidad is a part of as well.
We are only spending a few hours in Sancti Spiritus. The plan is to check out the city centre, withdraw some cash which unfortunately didn’t work out as planned because there was no working connection with the lines between Sancti Spiritus and Havana, and then have our lunch.
So we found a nice restaurant, the Mesón de la Plaza on Plaza Honorato del Castillo, albeit catering mainly to tourists I noticed, but it’s the nicest restaurant that has some life so far that we’ve found, so obviously we elected to eat here.
Because we plan to eat full dinner tonight, we decided to go vegetarian: Cuban vegetable salad and Cuban vegetable tomato soup!
I tell you this vegetable tomato soup was very good! Homely cooked, a very hearty yet light lunch. 4 stars out of 5.
This is a typical Cuban salad: steamed beans, carrots and beet root. I love my vegetables. We had Cuba Libre (rum cola) by the way for our drinks.
This couple has been sitting at this bar for HOURS. When we arrived in the city, this was our first stop, we had drinks here, and when came back after a DIY city tour, waiting at the bank, moving the car, they were still here, haha.
The restaurant was full of tourists from organised packaged tour groups. They had a 4-course lunch meal (salad, soup, main lunch meal that is meat and rice, dessert). Where do they store all those food in?
Blondine ordered bread and she got hard biscuits instead. Oh dear, poor girl. She’s Dutch so she’s desperately craving for her bread.
If you are not familiar with Dutch food and culture—Dutch people EAT A LOT of bread and not just any bread. Their special loaf of soft brown (whole grain) bread. The Netherlands is undoubtedly a bread country. The only time they do not eat bread is dinner. Most Dutch have a hard time surviving without their special soft brown bread. I know the Dutchman cannot, haha.
A Cuban restaurant is not complete without the live music. Do tip them though because they are not employees of the restaurant. They earn from tips.
I just noticed that most of the tourists here are older people, perhaps retirees. We are the youngest =)
Meson de la Plaza Restaurant is located on Plaza Honorato del Castillo, just a stone’s throw away from the Parroquial Mayor church.Travel Period: May 2012
Destination: Sancti Spiritus (Sancti Spiritus), Cuba
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