30 Things to Do in Cuba, From Havana to Baracoa

The best things to do in Cuba are spread across the whole island, not concentrated in Havana, and the country is long enough that trying to see all 30 of them in one trip will cost you more time on buses than in places. Pick a region, go deep, and come back for the other end.

Cuba in 2026 also asks more of a visitor than it used to. Bring cash, because Visa and Mastercard stopped working across the island in June 2026, and expect power cuts most days. Our Cuba travel guide covers the entry rules, the money and the practicalities before you book anything below.

Prefer to have it organised? GetYourGuide sells short tours and full day trips across Cuba, and a guided first day is the fastest way to get your bearings in a city where information is hard to find online.

30 fun things to do in Cuba

1. Swim and birdwatch at Cayo Coco

Cayo Coco is a flat, sandy cay in the Jardines del Rey chain off Cuba’s central north coast, and it pairs white-sand beaches with a serious bird reserve. From Havana it is a little over an hour by air, which saves a very long drive.

The lagoons behind the beach hold large flamingo populations, and the cay is a protected habitat for marine birds generally. Resorts, dive operators and watersports centres cluster along the northern shore. Come for the swimming and the birds, not for Cuban life, because the cays are a world apart from the towns.

2. Watch cigars being rolled at a Havana factory

A cigar factory tour shows you the hand-rolling that makes Cuban cigars what they are, and it takes about an hour. The Spanish word you will see is habano, meaning a cigar made entirely in Cuba from Cuban tobacco.

The Partagás factory is the best-known name for visitors, though production has moved between buildings over the years, so check where tours currently run before making a journey. Buy from the factory shop or a state shop with a receipt: street sellers offering suspiciously cheap boxes are selling fakes, and customs at your home airport will want the receipt anyway.

3. Ride through Havana in a 1950s American car

Havana’s fleet of restored 1950s American cars exists because the US trade embargo cut off new imports and Cubans kept the old ones running for seventy years. Riding in one is the most photographed thing in the country for good reason.

Convertibles are the ones to take, because the whole point is the view of the Malecón, the Capitolio, Vedado and the colonial centre going past. Agree the route and price before you set off, or book it as a tour so the price is fixed in advance.

Check out this tour, which takes you around Havana in a classic convertible.

4. Trace the sugar trade in Trinidad

Trinidad is a preserved colonial town built on sugar money, and the wealth that paid for its mansions came from enslaved labour on the plantations around it. Walking its cobbled streets is the single best architectural experience in Cuba outside Havana.

The Valle de los Ingenios, the Valley of the Sugar Mills, sits just inland and is part of the same UNESCO World Heritage listing. A heritage train has historically run out to it, though services have been interrupted, so check locally. Ancón beach is a short ride away, the Escambray mountains rise behind the town, and the Caburní waterfall makes a good half-day walk with a swim at the end.

5. Watch the sun set from the Malecón

The Malecón is Havana’s sea wall and esplanade, running about 7 km along the north shore, and it is where the city goes at the end of the day. Waves break over the wall on one side; weathered, once-grand buildings face it on the other.

It costs nothing, it is open all hours and it is the most reliable sunset in Cuba. Fishermen, musicians, couples and teenagers use it as a public living room, and the light on the buildings in the last hour is the reason every photographer walks it.

6. Hear live Cuban music on the street

Live music in Cuba is everywhere and mostly free, which is the opposite of how music tourism works in most countries. Son, salsa, rumba, trova and jazz all have living scenes, and a street corner with three musicians is a normal Tuesday.

Bars and restaurants build live sets into the evening, particularly in Havana, Trinidad and Santiago de Cuba. Musicians pass a hat or a basket at the end of a set; tip in cash. Santiago is where to go if you want the roots rather than the tourist repertoire.

7. Visit the clifftop fortress at Santiago de Cuba

Castillo de San Pedro de la Roca sits on a 60 m escarpment guarding the entrance to Santiago harbour, and it is one of the most complete Spanish-American military complexes anywhere. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its own right.

The Italian engineer Giovanni Battista Antonelli designed it in 1637 after decades of pirate raids on Santiago, and construction ran from 1638. The English privateer Henry Morgan damaged it badly in 1662, and it was rebuilt and enlarged over the following decades. It later served as a prison. Today it houses a museum of piracy in the Caribbean and a room on the 1898 naval battle fought in the bay between Spanish and US fleets. The view down the coast is worth the climb on its own.

Tip: if you want the wider history of the city, consider this historical tour of Santiago, which covers the Moncada Barracks, Santa Ifigenia cemetery and the Bacardí museum.

8. Walk Old Havana

Habana Vieja is the colonial core of the city and the part that earned Havana its UNESCO listing, and its four main squares are close enough to walk in a morning. Plaza de la Catedral, Plaza de Armas, Plaza de San Francisco and Plaza Vieja are the anchors.

The Castillo de la Real Fuerza on Plaza de Armas is the oldest surviving stone fort in the Americas, begun in 1558. The Museo de la Revolución occupies the former presidential palace, and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes is a short walk away. Architecture here runs from sixteenth-century Spanish through baroque to neoclassical, often on the same street.

This private tour with a local is the flexible option. If you would rather join a group, this walking tour covers the same ground.

9. Have a drink at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba

The Hotel Nacional de Cuba is a clifftop landmark above the Malecón that opened in 1930 and has been part of every chapter of modern Cuban history since. You do not have to stay there to walk in, cross the lobby and sit in the garden looking out to sea.

The building mixes Spanish, Moorish and art deco elements and was designed by the American firm McKim, Mead and White. It housed film stars, politicians and the American mobsters who ran Havana’s casinos before 1959, and its clifftop gun battery played a part during the 1962 missile crisis. Note that it is a state-run hotel, which matters for US visitors: check the State Department’s Cuba Prohibited Accommodations List before booking a room anywhere in Cuba.

10. Go out in a cave in Trinidad

Trinidad has a nightclub inside a cave on the hill above the town, which is a genuinely unusual night out. Music, dancing and occasional fire shows run late into the night in a natural rock chamber.

Cuban nightlife has been disrupted by power cuts and shortages, and opening patterns change, so ask at your casa on the day rather than turning up on the strength of a guidebook. Trinidad also has open-air music on the Casa de la Música steps most evenings, which is the fallback and arguably the better night.

11. Drink a daiquiri where Hemingway drank his

El Floridita in Havana is the bar most associated with the daiquiri and with Ernest Hemingway, who drank there for years and has a bronze statue propped at the end of the counter. It is touristy, expensive by Cuban standards and still worth one drink.

The daiquiri itself is older than the bar’s fame, dating to around the turn of the twentieth century near Santiago de Cuba, and El Floridita’s contribution was the frozen version. Hemingway’s own order was a double rum with no sugar, still served as the Papa Doble. For a quieter drink, La Bodeguita del Medio nearby claims his mojito.

12. Find the quiet beach at Playa Jibacoa

Playa Jibacoa is a stretch of sand between Havana and Varadero that most visitors drive straight past, which is exactly its appeal. Coral reef sits close to shore, so the snorkelling is good directly off the beach.

It works either as a day trip from Havana, roughly 60 km east, or as a couple of quiet nights on the way to Varadero. There are a handful of hotels and some casas in the villages nearby, and very little else, which is the point.

13. See Cuban art at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana holds the best collection of Cuban art anywhere, running from the colonial period to contemporary work. It is split across two buildings a few minutes apart.

The Palacio de Bellas Artes holds the Cuban collection; the Centro Asturiano holds the international one, which includes Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities alongside European painting. One ticket usually covers both. Give the Cuban building the bulk of your time, because it is the part you cannot see anywhere else.

14. Visit the Che Guevara mausoleum in Santa Clara

Santa Clara holds the mausoleum and memorial of Che Guevara, whose remains were returned from Bolivia and reburied here in 1997. The complex sits on the edge of town beneath a large bronze statue.

A museum alongside it displays his personal effects and tells the story in a series of tableaux, and the mausoleum holds the remains of comrades who died with him. Santa Clara is also where Guevara’s column derailed an armoured train in December 1958, the action that effectively ended the Batista government; the wrecked carriages are preserved as a separate monument in the town.

15. Spend a beach day in Varadero

Varadero is Cuba’s main resort strip, a 20 km sandbar on the Hicacos peninsula lined with hotels, and it is where most package holidays to Cuba land. The water is calm, shallow and unusually clear.

Beyond the beach there is a cave system you can swim in, diving off the reef, a golf course and daily markets. It is not representative of Cuba and nobody pretends otherwise; treat it as a few days of rest bolted onto a trip that also goes somewhere else.

16. See a ballet at the Gran Teatro de La Habana

The Gran Teatro de La Habana Alicia Alonso is the home of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba and one of the most ornate buildings in the city. It opened in 1915 as the Centro Gallego, the Galician community’s social palace, wrapped around a much older theatre.

The facade carries marble sculpture groups by the Italian-American sculptor Giuseppe Moretti, and the interior is stone, bronze and marble throughout. Cuban ballet is world-standard and tickets are inexpensive by international standards. Check the programme when you arrive rather than planning around it, because schedules are not reliably published abroad.

17. Look over the bay from Castillo de San Salvador de la Punta

Castillo de San Salvador de la Punta guards the western side of the entrance to Havana bay, opposite the larger Morro castle, and it is the easiest fortification in the city to reach on foot from the Malecón. It was built between 1589 and 1600.

It has been a fort, a prison and a museum at different times, and the small plaza around it gives some of the best views across the harbour mouth. Pair it with the Morro and La Cabaña across the water, where the nightly cannon ceremony still fires at nine o’clock.

18. Climb Pico Turquino

Pico Turquino is Cuba’s highest mountain at 1,974 m (6,476 ft), in the Sierra Maestra in the south-east, and it is a serious two or three-day walk rather than a day hike. No technical climbing gear is needed, but you do need to be fit.

A licensed guide is compulsory and the route passes through changing forest with a lot of endemic plant and bird life. The Sierra Maestra is also where Fidel Castro’s rebel army had its headquarters, and the preserved Comandancia de la Plata camp can be visited on a shorter walk from Santo Domingo if the full summit is too much.

19. Eat what Cubans eat

Cuban street food is cheap, fast and nothing like the menus in tourist restaurants, which is exactly why it is worth seeking out. Look for a window with a queue of locals rather than a sign in English.

Regulars include coconut sweets, pan con lechón roast pork sandwiches, fritters, guava pastries and fruit shakes. Availability swings with supply, so the stall that had something yesterday may not today. Carry small notes; nobody will have change for a large one.

20. Learn to dance salsa

Salsa lessons are widely available in Cuba and a couple of hours of them changes how the evenings go. Cuban salsa, casino, is danced in a circular style that differs from the linear salsa taught in Europe and North America.

Schools operate in Havana, Trinidad and Santiago, and many casas can arrange a private teacher to come to the house. Group classes are cheaper and more fun. Two lessons is enough to stop you standing at the edge of the room.

21. Sit out at Plaza Vieja

Plaza Vieja in Old Havana is the square to sit in, ringed by restored colonial and early twentieth-century buildings with cafés under the arcades. It was laid out in 1559 and it is the most comfortable of Havana’s four main squares for doing nothing.

The white marble fountain in the centre is a modern reconstruction. The original, carved by the Italian sculptor Giorgio Massari, was destroyed in 1952 when an underground car park was built beneath the square under Batista; the square was restored decades later. There are galleries around the edges, a camera obscura in one corner and a brewery serving beer by the tower.

22. Get out to Baracoa

Baracoa, on the far eastern tip of the island, is Cuba’s oldest Spanish settlement, founded in 1511, and it feels different from everywhere else in the country. It is about 1,000 km (620 mi) from Havana, so fly or accept a long haul overland.

Until a mountain road was cut in the 1960s, the town could only be reached by sea, and that isolation shaped its food: cacao, coconut and coffee run through everything, and the cooking uses coconut milk in a way the rest of Cuba does not. Accommodation is almost entirely in casas particulares. Playa Maguana, north of town, is the beach.

23. Watch a baseball game

Baseball is Cuba’s national sport and the National Series runs from roughly November to April, with cheap tickets and a loud, informed crowd. It is one of the few genuinely local experiences a visitor can just walk into.

Havana’s Estadio Latinoamericano is the biggest ground. Ask locally about fixtures, because schedules are not reliably published online. The standard of play has fallen as players have left the island, which is itself part of the story, and the arguing in the stands is half the entertainment.

24. Drink coffee at an old plantation above Santiago

The ruins of French-built coffee plantations in the mountains above Santiago de Cuba are collectively a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Cafetal La Isabelica is the most visited of them. It is roughly an hour and a half from the city up into the Gran Piedra range.

French planters fleeing the Haitian Revolution brought coffee growing to eastern Cuba around 1800, and the terraces, aqueducts and drying floors they built survive across the hills. The Gran Piedra itself, a vast boulder reached by a long stone staircase, is next door.

25. Look inside Cuba’s churches

Cuba’s churches survived the revolution largely intact, which is not true everywhere that declared itself atheist, so the colonial religious architecture is still standing and still in use. Havana Cathedral on Plaza de la Catedral is the obvious start.

Elsewhere, the Basilica of El Cobre near Santiago is Cuba’s most important pilgrimage site and holds the shrine of the Virgin of Charity, the country’s patron. Religious practice in Cuba often blends Catholic and West African traditions, which is why Santería and Catholicism share space and imagery.

If you want to understand that properly, this two-hour walking tour visits the homes of practising believers in Havana.

26. Eat in a private restaurant

Private restaurants, paladares, are where Cuba’s best cooking happens, and eating in one puts money directly into a Cuban household rather than a state enterprise. They started as licensed home kitchens and now include serious, ambitious places.

Cuba legalised small and medium private businesses in 2021, which expanded what a paladar can be. Shortages and power cuts have made running one hard, so menus shrink, dishes run out and opening hours move. Book a day ahead and confirm on the day, and treat the menu as a list of possibilities.

27. See the French colonial city of Cienfuegos

Cienfuegos is a nineteenth-century city on the south coast founded by French settlers in 1819, and its planned neoclassical centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It looks and feels different from Spanish-founded Cuban towns.

Parque José Martí is the formal heart, with the Tomás Terry theatre and the Ferrer palace on it. The Punta Gorda peninsula, a short ride south, is a strip of eccentric early twentieth-century villas ending at the Moorish-fantasy Palacio de Valle. Boat trips run around the bay to the Jagua fortress.

28. Snorkel the Bay of Pigs

The Bay of Pigs, Bahía de Cochinos, has some of Cuba’s best shore diving and snorkelling, with a coral wall running close to the beach, and it is far quieter than the resort coasts. Playa Larga and Playa Girón are the two bases.

The bay is better known as the site of the failed US-backed invasion of April 1961. A museum at Playa Girón tells the Cuban account of it, and roadside monuments mark where fighting happened. Nearby, the Zapata peninsula is Cuba’s largest wetland and a major birding site, and Cueva de los Peces is a flooded sinkhole you can swim in.

29. Have a rooftop drink in central Havana

Havana’s rooftop bars give you the city’s skyline and the sea in one view, and the Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski has the best-known of them. Opened in 2017 in a restored early twentieth-century shopping arcade opposite the Capitolio, it was the first international five-star hotel to open in Cuba after the revolution.

You can use the rooftop bar without staying. As with any hotel in Cuba, US visitors should check the State Department’s Cuba Prohibited Accommodations List before booking a room, because state-linked properties appear on it.

30. Eat lobster at a casa particular

Lobster is one of the few things in Cuba that costs less than you expect, and the best place to eat it is at a casa particular where your hosts cook dinner. Ask in the morning and it appears in the evening.

Prices have risen with everything else and the bargain is no longer what older guides describe, but it is still good value against what the same meal costs in the rest of the Caribbean. Eating at your casa also means your money goes to the family rather than a state restaurant, and the cooking is usually better.

Planning your trip to Cuba

Read the practical guide before you book, because Cuba’s rules changed recently and in ways that will spoil a trip if you miss them. The paper tourist card was withdrawn at the end of 2025 and replaced by an electronic visa linked to the D’Viajeros arrival form, proof of travel medical insurance is checked at the border, and Visa and Mastercard stopped working across the island on 6 June 2026.

Our Cuba travel guide covers all of it, along with how the peso now converts, how to get around and when to go.

Do not forget travel insurance

Travel medical insurance is not optional for Cuba, it is a legal entry condition, and immigration officers ask to see proof of it. That makes Cuba different from most destinations, where insurance is merely sensible.

A policy also covers the things Cuba is genuinely likely to throw at you: a cancelled domestic flight, a hurricane between June and November, or a medical problem in a country where imported medicines are scarce. I have carried rolling travel insurance since I started travelling, because one cancelled connection costs more than a year of cover.

Do not have travel insurance yet? Check out SafetyWing. Their plans are flexible enough to start after you have already left home, which is useful if you only discover Cuba’s insurance requirement while packing.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

Five things that change how a Cuba trip goes are listed below.

1. Carry the whole trip in cash. Visa and Mastercard payments stopped working across Cuba on 6 June 2026, so a card is not a backup any more. Bring euros in mixed denominations and split them between bags.
2. Assume the power will be off for part of every day. Cuba’s grid failed nationwide several times in 2026 and daily outages are normal. Lifts, air conditioning, hot water, card terminals and sometimes mobile coverage go with it.
3. Do not plan around anything you read online about Cuban opening hours. Museums, bars, the Trinidad cave club and the Valle de los Ingenios train have all been intermittent. Ask at your casa on the morning of, which is the only reliable source in the country.
4. US visitors must check two lists, not one. Ordinary tourism is still prohibited and travel has to fit an authorised category, and the State Department separately publishes hotels US visitors may not stay in. The Hotel Nacional and the Kempinski are both state-linked properties, so check before booking rather than after.
5. Book the lobster at breakfast. Casa hosts buy for the evening during the day. Ask in the morning and you get dinner cooked to order for less than a tourist restaurant charges for chicken.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, who travels on a rolling travel insurance policy and has spent years working out which destinations need more preparation than a guidebook admits. The team covers Cuba for independent travellers, including the Havana tours, casas particulares and travel insurance worth arranging before you fly, and updates this page when entry rules, payment systems and opening patterns change.