Havana Pocket Precincts A Pocket Guide to the City's Best Cultural Hangouts, Shops, Bars and Eateries

A handy, pocket-sized guide to the best of Havana, plus daytrips further afield.

Facing the Atlantic with its Spanish colonial core, wedding-cake mansions, Art Deco towers and preserved-1950s hotels, Havana is utterly gorgeous. It is also a city on the cusp of change. In the last 10 years, the city has evolved from austerity to a happening place: new bars, privately owned restaurants, music venues, boutique stores and cultural events have transformed this city of two million people. Havana Pocket Precincts is your curated guide to the city's best cultural, shopping, eating and drinking experiences, and its most accessible and budget-friendly choices. Each precinct takes in one or more of Havana's districts with insider reviews of both outstanding attractions and hidden gems, as well as easy-to-use maps. The guide also has selection of field trips that encourages you to venture outside the city to Viñales, Trinidad, and the Eastern Beaches. Slip this guide into your pocket and head off on an adventure, experiencing the coolest places in Cuba's capital and the surrounds.

Travel writer Claire Boobbyer has been writing about Havana for almost two decades. She first went to Cuba in 1998 to see why the Christmas Day public holiday had been banned by Fidel Castro. Within days she fell in love with the country and now divides her time between Havana and London. Claire has danced, dived, drunk, biked, and walked around Cuba, and is still discovering new corners of this enigmatic isle. She writes for a wide variety of magazines, newspapers, online sites and guidebooks including Frommer's and Time Out, and manages the website insidecuba.co.