El Floridita is within staggering distance, on a corner of Calle del Obispo. It too has been renovated, more elegant now than when Hemingway downed daiquiris there with Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy and bullfighting legend Luis Miguel Dominguin. A bust of Hemingway overlooks his favorite corner and a framed article from an old Esquire magazine describes it as one of the best bars in the world and an international crossroads. Hemingway kept two drinking cups in El Floridita, Quinones said, one that stayed in the bar and another that he would fill for the drive home to his villa at Finca la Vigia, about 10 miles out of town in San Francisco de Paula. The villa was found by his third wife, Martha Gelhorn, after she tired of living in the hotel, and he lived there between travels from 1940 until his death in Idaho in 1961.
Visitors can peer through the windows and see it much as it was.
In the lush tropical garden is a swimming pool where Ava Gardner once swam naked. After Hemingway committed suicide, his widow Mary Welsh gave the property to Cuba's Communist government, which was about to expropriate it anyway. But he also worried that the new rulers might abuse power once they held it. Hemingway and Castro, who cites Hemingway as one of his favorite authors, met only once, at a fishing tournament in 1960. A famous photograph documents the meeting.