A standout amid Old Havana's ornate but crumbling colonial buildings, the Dutch-run hotel could well be in Hong Kong or Houston. It's just the latest example of how Cuba is rolling out the welcome mat, romancing tourists with new resorts, restaurants and nightspots. To keep the island afloat without the Soviet subsidies of a decade ago, Fidel Castro has raised a banner of tourism or death. Once scorned by the revolution, tourism has soared to first place among the nation' s industries. Indeed, the capital is awash in foreigners.
Tour buses cruise Parisian boulevards, past mansions built by sugar barons.
Nightclubs swarm with vacationers in search of a wickedly good time. At the Hemingway Marina, luxury yachts from abroad line the docks, at least a dozen flying the Stars and Stripes. As it is retrofitted for tourism, Havana is a web of scaffolding and cranes. Some have been reborn as boutique hotels, like the tony Ambos Mundos, where Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls . Like the hotel, the city reeks with intrigue and nostalgia.