El Floridita

El Floridita is Havana's most famous bar — a pink-and-mahogany establishment at the corner of Obispo and Monserrate that claims to be the birthplace of the daiquiri and was Ernest Hemingway's preferred drinking spot during his two decades of living in Cuba. A life-sized bronze statue of Hemingway leans against the bar in his customary position, and the bartenders (in white jackets, bow ties, and the professional demeanour of people who take cocktail-making seriously) serve the frozen daiquiri that Hemingway favoured — the Papa Doble, made with double rum, no sugar, and grapefruit juice.

The bar was founded in 1817 as a silver shop and became a bar in the 1820s. The Catalan bartender Constantino Ribalaigua Vert is credited with perfecting the daiquiri in the 1930s, and Hemingway's patronage (he lived in Cuba from 1939 to 1960 and was a daily presence at El Floridita) turned a good bar into a literary landmark. The photographs on the walls document the bar's Golden Age, when American tourists, Cuban high society, and Hemingway shared the same mahogany counter.

The daiquiris are excellent (the frozen version, blended with crushed ice, is the house specialty), the prices are tourist-level (this is not where Habaneros drink on their budget), and the live son music that plays from mid-morning onward provides the soundtrack that makes drinking at El Floridita feel like participating in a tradition rather than consuming a product.