José & Carley 🌎 Home to Havana

We spotted our favorite @havanaclub in the wild at @westingcayman 😍 sunset drinks from the presidential suite today was a great way to enjoy the start to a new, exciting travel season in the Caribbean! #havanaclub #westingrandcayman

Today our story about scuba diving in Jardines de la Reina, Cuba hit the AP wires. Once off-limits this untouched paradise is now among the world’s best destinations for diving with sharks. Thanks to @paditv for your help in telling the story of this unique diving bucket list destination! #padi #paditv #travelwriter

🍹This is the face of “hurry up and take the picture so we can eat” 😂 This long weekend we’re in Miami - part work, part family time, and all about eating as much Cuban food as we can. So we had to start at the most famous Cuban restaurant in the world - Versailles on Calle Ocho in Little Havana. With obligatory croquetas and batidos de mamey. Let us know in the comments if you’ve spent time in Miami and what we CAN’T miss!

✌️HEY AGAIN. Okay, who is learning new skills during this pandemic - or trying to at least? Is it just me or is it freaking harder than ever? We’ve been a little MIA over here as we continue to build out our website and do *all the things* at once. Check out what we’ve been up to at HomeToHavana.com 🇨🇺🎉

👉 let these moments be your reminder to never take for granted watching a sunset on the Malecón rather than from the window of your house 👉 and the moments you let yourself start dreaming of what’s next again

pretty in pink 💖 we’re missing Cuba a lot today. swimming in the ocean in Florida and pretending it’s Varadero. who else is ready for COVID to be a thing of the past?? 🤚

FOUR YEARS 🇺🇸🇨🇺 it has been four whole years since José arrived in the USA for the very first time! Can you tell how happy we are?! With family in the US and in Cuba we’re always close to someone and far from someone at the same time. It’s not easy but we’re THANKFUL we have the opportunity to feel at home here AND there ☀️

TOO. MANY. CHOICES. 🤯 There are so many fantastic places to stay in Havana these days that it can be really overwhelming to make a good choice. Check out our complete guide to where to stay in Havana to see our favorites >> the link is in our bio! Somewhere we missed of just HAVE to check out? Let us know in the comments! 👇

🤩 our website is LIVE 🤩 We decided to launch Home to Havana for two reasons: 👉 We started realizing how little quality content featuring local voices there is online about travel to Cuba. I remember reading an article several months ago by a well-respected travel blogger giving recommendations about what to do in Havana and thinking I would have recommended the EXACT OPPOSITE 🤦‍♂️ Cuba is absolutely one of those places where you NEED an insider perspective to have a good time, and to go more than surface-deep in your experience. We wanted to offer that to our readers. 👉 We wanted to share our unique story about our own journey and inspire you in yours. Take the steps to get you to where you want to be…. just start taking them, even if you don’t see the end in sight just yet, and even if it feels miles and miles away. We’re not there yet, but taking this first step - to start making that dream a reality - has proven to be one of the most important ones we could take. Thanks for joining us along this journey so far. This is just the beginning. Now, time to celebrate 🎉

Searching for the best view in Havana? With the Habana Libre, Plaza de la Revolución, and the ocean in the distance, the view from my tía's apartment in 10 de Octubre is my personal favorite.

Are you looking up? ☀️ I’m don’t mean how situations are, actually, but how you’re looking at them. Are you looking up, even if your situation isn’t? It’s a powerful thing 💥

Cuba’s ever-present home security system with love 🚨 abuelas watching from the windows and balconies. Most up-to-date in neighborhood gossip, most likely to be judging you for it.

Who had some big realizations in the last few months in quarantine? 👉 That you’ve been missing out on time with family in the hustle and bustle? 👉 That your job is just not cutting it? 👉That you’ve put your dreams on hold for far too long? Keep digging in to what you’re feeling…something good is brewing in there. This pandemic has been a huge wakeup call for us. It is not easy when everything has been put on hold and pushed back and cancelled. Everything that you’re planning and dreaming of and working towards can be taken away instantly - we’ve seen that now and lived through it. We’ve definitely looked at each other and thought “what matters now?” How do we make the most of what we do have, and focus on what we really want, to use this crappy situation as a springboard rather than a sinkhole? It's often in times where things are taken away that we realize we can do a lot more with what we have than we may have been complacent enough to do before. We’re hoping that our story is even better as a result of this than it was before. Yours can be, too.

First impressions of Cuba... 📸 I traveled to Cuba for the first time on a university trip in 2013, and had absolutely no idea what to expect. Little did I know that just a year and a half later I’d find my reason to go back 💍🥰 Cuba was enchanting and mystifying… I didn’t know what to expect but it was somehow so different from what I could have expected all at the same time. All I really knew was that there was so much more to see. After a week there, by the time we were on the plane home, my friend and I were already plotting how we would come back - it was not as easy as it is now to travel to Cuba as an American. (yes…it is EASY! more on that in just a few days…) I think I was wrapped up in how different the political system was from anything I’d ever witnessed before…but there is so much more to Cuba than politics, and by my next trip there I started to see that. Comment your first impression of Cuba below👇 - Carley

If you didn’t hang with the locals, did you even go? That’s our motto when it comes to travel. And it’s truer than anywhere else in Cuba - there is so much richness and beauty that comes from the people here. You’ll find it by digging just a little bit deeper ☀️