Havana, Cuba 5 Day Itinerary

Havana, Cuba 5-Day Itinerary

The CUC does not exist anymore, and any itinerary still telling you to bring convertible pesos is at least five years out of date. Cuba abolished the CUC on what it called Day Zero, January 1, 2021, folding it into the Cuban Peso, CUP, at a fixed conversion rate. Since then the peso has kept sliding: the official rate sits around 120 CUP to the dollar in 2026, while the informal street rate, which is what everyone actually uses, has pushed past 600 CUP to the dollar. That gap alone tells you more about the state of the country right now than any list of restaurants can.

Before anything else, understand what you’re actually walking into in 2026. Cuba is in the middle of its worst electricity crisis in its history. Oil imports effectively dropped to zero in January 2026 after Venezuela’s fuel shipments stopped and Mexico suspended its own planned exports, and the aging power grid can no longer meet even half of national demand. The result is rolling blackouts that regularly stretch past 18 hours a day, with at least two full national grid collapses in March 2026 alone, one of them lasting nearly 30 hours. Hotels and paladares are running on expensive diesel generators when they can, or simply going dark when they can’t. This affects everything below: expect restaurants to close without warning, air conditioning to be intermittent, and elevators in older buildings to be out of service more often than not. Pack a headlamp. It will matter more than any single museum on this list.

Day 1: Old Havana

Check into a casa particular or hotel in Habana Vieja and start slow; jet lag plus heat plus intermittent power is a rough combination to fight on day one. Walk the core plazas, Plaza de Armas, Plaza Vieja, and Plaza San Francisco de Asis, all within a compact, walkable core of colonial architecture that’s genuinely one of the best-preserved old towns in the Caribbean. The Museum of Fine Arts holds a strong collection of Cuban modernist work that rarely gets mentioned outside specialist guides, worth prioritizing over the more famous but more crowded Museum of the Revolution if you only have time for one.

For dinner, paladares, privately run restaurants operating out of family homes, are still the better bet than state-run establishments, and La Guarida, on the second floor of a crumbling but beautiful old building, remains one of the most reliable of the well-known ones. For evening entertainment, check ahead before planning around Fabrica de Arte Cubano; the multi-venue arts and music space announced a pause on regular operations in June 2026 and has been running special events only since, so verify current hours on its social media rather than assuming nightly programming.

Day 2: Vedado and the Malecon

Spend the morning in Vedado, Havana’s more modern, tree-lined district, home to the University of Havana and the José Martí Memorial, a striking star-shaped tower with a viewing platform over the city. Grab lunch at a seafood paladar on 23rd Street; Vedado’s dining scene tends to be a notch more relaxed and less tourist-priced than Old Havana’s.

In the afternoon, walk the Malecon, the seawall that runs for miles along Havana’s waterfront and doubles as the city’s social heart at sunset, when locals gather to fish, drink, and talk regardless of the state of the grid inland. Continue into Centro Habana, which is grittier and more visibly worn than the restored core of Old Havana, giving a more honest sense of daily life here. Have dinner at a paladar serving traditional Cuban plates, and if the lights go out mid-meal, don’t be alarmed; most established places have a backup plan for exactly this.

Day 3: Fusterlandia and the Beach

Take a taxi out to Jaimanitas to see Fusterlandia, the neighborhood the artist Jose Fuster covered floor to ceiling in his own mosaic work over decades, turning an ordinary residential block into something closer to a Gaudi fever dream. Fares run in cash, negotiate before you get in, and expect to pay in the range of a few thousand pesos or the dollar equivalent depending on distance and who’s driving; don’t rely on a fixed CUC-era price quoted by an outdated guide.

Spend the afternoon at Playas del Este, the string of beaches east of the city, Santa Maria del Mar being the most developed and Guanabo the more local option. Bring cash for food from beach vendors since card payment infrastructure here is thin even in good times, and as of June 2026 Visa and Mastercard have stopped being accepted in Cuba entirely, so don’t count on plastic working anywhere, beach or otherwise. Return to Havana for dinner at a paladar in Old Havana, then look for a salsa club with live music if you’ve still got energy; ask your casa host for whichever spot is actually running that night rather than a name from an old blog post, since venue schedules shift constantly under current conditions.

Day 4: Artisans and Music

Visit the San Alejandro Art School district and the artisan market in Miramar for locally made crafts and instruments, then head to Almacenes San Jose, the sprawling covered artisan market in Old Havana, for a wider selection and better browsing than the smaller neighborhood stalls. If you’re drawn to Cuban music beyond the tourist-circuit son and salsa nights, Casa de la Musica hosts more serious live acts and is worth checking for what’s actually booked during your stay.

Dinner at a well-regarded paladar near Plaza Vieja rounds out the evening, and if you haven’t tried a salsa class yet, this is the night to do it; most instructors work informally and word of mouth through your accommodation will get you a better, cheaper lesson than anything pre-booked online.

Day 5: Departure

Keep the morning light, a final walk through whichever neighborhood you connected with most, then head to the airport with real buffer time built in. Airport transfers run on the same fuel constraints as everything else in the city, so a taxi that would normally take 30 minutes can take considerably longer if there’s a fuel queue or a blackout affecting traffic signals along the route.

A few things to plan around for the whole trip. Bring more cash than you think you’ll need, ideally US dollars or euros, since ATMs are unreliable and card acceptance has effectively ended as of mid-2026. Internet access is patchy and improving only slowly; buy an ETECSA SIM or data card at the airport if you need connectivity, but expect outages, especially outside central Havana. Always ask before photographing people directly, and be genuinely respectful discussing politics or the current crisis with locals, many of whom are living through daily hardship that a short visit doesn’t fully convey. None of this makes Havana not worth visiting. It makes it a trip that rewards flexibility and low expectations around scheduling far more than it rewards a tightly timed itinerary.