The Top 12 Places to Drink Near Vuelta Abajo
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A peacock roams the courtyard of the Conde de Villanueva hotel, which makes Vuelta Abajo, the bar tucked inside this Spanish colonial building near Plaza Vieja, feel like a perfectly reasonable place to start drinking. The setting is all lush palms and old Havana atmosphere, with a name that nods to Cuba's finest tobacco-growing region. Come for a cigar and whatever rum the bar is pouring.
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Rank 2. Factoria
Beer Bar
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Rank 3. Parque Central
Cocktail Bar
The rooftop poolside bar in the newer wing and the lush conservatory lobby in the original building split the difference between colonial grandeur and something almost Mediterranean. Both pour from the same menu, heavy on premium spirits and classic cocktails with garnishes that mean business. For Havana, that kind of consistency is its own small miracle. Come for a daiquiri while the city hums below.
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Rank 4. Bar Havana Club
Cocktail Bar
Attached to the Havana Club rum museum in Old Havana, this cocktail bar is done up as a 1930s-era drinking room, all dark wood and period detail. The museum tour technically ends here, though skipping straight to a daiquiri is a defensible life choice. The rum is the point, and the setting makes the glass taste like context. Coach tours roll through, so timing is everything.
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The walls are so dense with decades of scrawled graffiti that finding a blank patch feels like an achievement. This Havana bar runs almost entirely on its Hemingway mythology, and the mojitos, lined up in rows and made with blackened mint muddled into warm flatness, do little to contradict that read. A four-piece band squeezes in anyway, the room is standing-room and sweaty, and nobody seems to mind. Come for the atmosphere; just know what you're ordering.
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A rickety lift with its own attendant operator takes you up to this rooftop bar, which sits above a colonial hotel on Calle Obispo under a canopy of climbing flowers. Hemingway lived downstairs in room 511 and apparently wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls there, so yes, the ghost of Papa looms large. Order a drink, enjoy the Havana rooftops, and decide for yourself how much of the mythology you believe.
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A concrete building shaped like a ship juts into the canal at Havana's harbour entrance, and Los Marinos bar sits at its farthest point, which means you can't see the building you're standing in. That's a genuine architectural mercy. Grab a seat in the sea breeze and watch container ships pass on one side while locals fish in what is, almost certainly, fairly polluted water on the other.
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Rank 9. Dos Hermanos
Cuban
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Rank 10. Bar Monserrate
Cuban
A high-ceilinged bar open to the street on Avenida de Bélgica, steel shutters rolled up to let the Havana heat in. The ornamental coving hints at earlier glamour, but the current program runs to live music, dancing, wandering magicians, and an old man working through a cigar with great professional seriousness. If it looks staged, it isn't. The guy on the door boxes for a living, which tells you something about the energy inside.
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Rank 11. El Floridita
Cuban
A bronze Hemingway leans on the far end of the bar, looking like he owns the place, which in spirit he sort of did. El Floridita is the cocktail bar that bills itself, in both English and Spanish, as the cradle of the Daiquiri, and the room commits fully to that story. It's touristy in the most theatrical way possible, and the daiquiris are cold and strong enough that you stop minding.
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Rank 12. Lluvia de Oro
Coffee
The ceiling fans and decorative moldings say "grand colonial building"; the TV above the wooden bar says something else entirely. This sprawling, high-ceilinged bar on Calle Obispo is a daytime coffee spot in leather-backed chairs and a loud, dancing-in-the-aisles scene after dark. The bar doesn't pretend to be a serious drinking destination, which is part of what makes an afternoon here so easy to lose track of.