Saga Holidays

OK, so it took quite a while before we succumbed to the generic OAP holiday. It's official; we are now Saga Louts. It has its benefits. Chauffeured to the airport from home, for one. It wasn't our driver's fault he had to drive us up to Gatwick Monday morning in freezing fog passing miles of car wreckage on the opposite motorway lanes. Only took us 3 hours. And the check in was surprisingly easy. Virgin Atlantic had a ratio of 10 check in desks to 3 passengers. And the much maligned Weatherspoons wasn't a problem either as they had been closed down, separated by the ubiquitous white Gatwick chipboard walls from the rest of the departure lounge. Serves 'em right! And the 10 hour flight to Havana was, in fairness, quite pleasant, especially after paying for extra leg room online. Makes me feel almost guilty for having a rant. Almost.
Havana airport was billed extensively on TripAdvisor as being a nightmare: two hours to get through an officious Immigration regime and/or two hours to wait for the bags to come out one. at. a. bloody. time. As it turned out, our Saga rep said that he'd never seen people come out so quick, so much so that out of 27 of our fellow Louts we were the second and third. The next order of business was to convert some cash. There were long queues at the airport Exchange, he warned. No so. Ten minutes later and I was 118 kooks (Cuban CUCs to you) better off (£100 worse off but that's what happens when Cuba tied their exchange rate to the perennially hated American dollar).
Eventually, our 25 fellow Louts tottered out of baggage reclaim and we marched off to the waiting transfer coach . . .
. . . straight into a tropical storm that was reducing Havana into a state of chaos apparently. Our hotel is in the up-market diplomats' district on the north coast west of the old city (mainly because the fixtures and fittings are less likely to fall off). That evening we patrolled the swimming pool area that was feeling the brunt of the waves. The manager, a solid individual in his best suit, stood surveying the wind and water all alone as if it was a personal affront. Maybe we'll stay in the hotel bar tonight, we thought. The next day we were booked onto a tour of the city which was a tad disrupted because all the coastal roads, including the main seafront, plus the tunnels leading into the old part of the city, were closed due to flooding. As it turned out, it was a bit of a blessing as Niall, our Irish/Cuban tour guide, ditched the bus and made all us old folk get out and walk through the old town. We did see a lot more that way. Mind you, with 27 fellow retirees, all with minds (to some degree or other) of their own, it was a bit like herding cats. Amazing he never lost anyone during all the stopping and triple counting but I'm sure I detected some gnashing of teeth telepathically. So, all in all, everything is going swimmingly, which makes for some boring writing. Never mind, early days.