It is interesting to go to the lobby of Cubas famous Hotel National the morning after the gala dinner - there is NOBODY on the terrace until 11:00am. Only by then the people seem to get back to life after partying on until somewhat 4:00am. Anyhow, I had to see Mitchell for some minutes and so we decided to meet at 8:00am for a classic Cuban breakfast which is Rum, strong Cuban coffee and of course a cigar.

We found some nice cigar memorabila from our agent and decided to buy the stuffl. Carefully we wrapped our Ramon Allones Jars, some 5 Bocas and a bunch of antique humidors up and brought them to the Hotel. It is getting a bit hard to find really nice pieces now and some hustlers (so called Antique dealers) now start selling old jewellery boxes as antique humidors.

Riding out to the Siboney just outside Havana I had the pleasure of meeting one of my old friends, Dr. Daniel Solana Piñera. Solana was the first president of Cubatobacco when it was founded in the 60\'s and after his retirement some years ago he became President of the Brotherhood Jean Nicot in Cuba. His wife made, thank god, some more strong coffee and we ended up talking about the good old times. Daniel Solana is most likely the last remaining gentlemen in the Cuban cigar industrie and his vast knowledge is second to none. Sitting in our rocking chairs we kept chatting for hours.

Mitchell organzied a great cigar tasting of regional editions at the Floridita, most certainly because there was no other room available in Havana at that time. We smoked the Bolivar Phoenicias - and after turning the phoenix to ashes we must admit that is a great stick coming to the middle east soon. Right after we sampled a rare Rey del Mundo Vikingos from Baltics given to me by Mahesh, who happens to be the sole importer of Cuban cigars to the Baltic States. The Gordito sized Vikingos in my personal eyes is currently the cigar with the best potential and a very unique sweetness. No doubt this is my favourite smoke and so I fall into a funny discussion with my friends. I bet the Vikingos turns out being a hottie - and Mahesh only had made 408 cabs of 25. I talked his ears off to get some more single sticks to smoke in Havana - and was lucky to get some heheee.

At Partagas we ran into Gary Heathcott of Cuba Films who just finshed a documentary about the history of the Cohiba cigar. He told us the whole story behind the film and the two years of its production. We bought some copies straight away and so the great 50 min movie will be available soon at the LCDH Hamburg webshop - in US and European version.

Enough for today. Pizza at Prado y Neptuno and then basta for today. More tomorrow when the crowd leaves the smoky city.