Trinidad

Next stop: Trinidad. This time our hosts have gone so far as to organizing a Bici-Taxi to pick us up from the bus stop and deliver us (and our considerable luggage) to the Case Particular.
The owners are really nice, but a bit overprotective. According to them, we should not eat in random place in the street for risk of diarrhoea, don't have random fruit from the stalls in the street for risk of diarrhoea, and not drink the tap water for, surprise, the same reason. The solution would be to have breakfast and dinner in their Casa Particular, and drink (and pay for) the bottled water from their fridge.
Of course, we nod, smile, and proceed to ignore all their advice. We enjoyed ourselves tremendously.

Trinidad itself is, by modern standards, a really small town. But it's one of the best preserved towns in all the Caribbean  from the good old sugar-trade times. In the centre, there really are hardly any modern buildings, just nicely restored collonial houses.

View over the roofs of Trinidad. I guess it looked pretty much the same 50 or even 100 years ago. Maybe less people offering "Horseback riding!", but thankfully you can't see them from up here.

Of course, a lot of travellers apart from us are aware of this as well, and the local population as well. It was definitely the most touristic town we've seen in Cuba, with someone jumping at us and yelling "Taxi?!", "Horseback riding?!" or "Restaurant? Nice Restuarant!" every few metres.
But still, this is Cuba, so a brief "No, gracias." did the trick. Of the many things a tourist can do in this city, we just did the Museo Nacional de la Luche Contra Bandidos ("Museum of the Fight against the Bandits", where "Bandits" means "people opposed to the socialist revolution".) and the Casa de la Musica (Yes, the Cubaniest live music possible. We couldn't quite figure out if is existed only for the visiting people with lots of cash, or if it was actually a local thing.. the audience was really mixed.

Exhibits like this (Russian truck used to transport good guys) and many others (guns used by bad guys, motorboat used by bad guys, hairbrush used by good guy, etc.) didn't impress us too much. And our Spanish wasn't good enough to read the letters on display from Fidel, Ché, and his even more sympathetic sidekick, Camilo Cienfuegos.

And, of course, we did a trip to the Playa Ancon close by, in a Coco Taxi (invented in India, designed in Italy, and built in Cuba.). And we traded my fins for two Coco Locos (which are fresh coco nuts, with rum, sugar and lime poured into them. All of those ingredients are cheap and abundant in Cuba, so a wonderful invention.)

From left to right: Donat (with turquoise sunglasses), Coco Loco, Coco Loco, and Hannah (with turquoise sunglasses).

The museums of local history and architecture were, unfortunately, closed when we tried to visit them. Reason: Heavy rain. The schools stayed closed that day as well.

Me, colonial veranda, and lots of rain. The rain isn't really visible in the photo, but believe me, there was a lot.