Little Havana, here we come! Tuesday, March 16th

So after we picked up our laundry on Tuesday morning, we were ready to head to downtown Miami and discover Little Havana and the neighborhood's main street, Calle Ocho. We stopped in a visitor's center and found out there was a bus that would take us to downtown Miami, and from there we could take a short taxi ride.

I looked through my list of cigar shops to visit, and picked out two: Perdomo on Flagler Street, and Padron on Calle Ocho itself. So when we got off the bus on Flagler street, we just started walking west, looking for Nick's Cigars, the home of Perdomo. We later discovered that Perdomo is no longer on Flagler Street, but in the meantime, we found the perfect place to have our lunch, a restaurant/cafeteria/phone store called Los Mangos.

We poked our heads in, and all the signs for food were in Spanish. The girl behind the counter spoke only Spanish as well. So she went and found the owner, who spoke good English, and he helped us a bit. The menus, it turned out, were also in English/Spanish. I know Spanish food - I grew up in a city with a huge Hispanic population, and my best friend was Puerto Rican. I wasn't sure if Cuban food is similar, but I just ordered one dish, because I had the feeling it was going to be a lot. Kevin didn't know this, so he ordered a soup and a main course.

Our food came and sure enough, it was a lot. I had Chuletas en salsa, and in addition to a couple of healthy sized pork chops, there was rice and beans and lots of fresh made tortillas and plenty of hot sauces and a dish of peppers if we wanted any spice. Kevin finished his beef soup, which came with rice and tortillas, and then also had some grilled beef with rice and beans and such. Needless to say he had leftovers.

So once we discovered that Nick's Cigars had unfortunately moved to another city(!), we took a taxi to Calle Ocho, and got out in front of the Padilla lounge. Wow, what a nice place! It is one huge room, maybe 30 by 30 feet, maybe bigger. In the front you have on one side shelves with cigars for sale and a counter right behind that. There are also lots of comfortable couches and leather chairs in the front.

Then the middle of the store/lounge is dominated by about 5 rolling stations - unfortunately the rollers had already gone home, but still this was our first time seeing cigar rolling stations in Miami, so we were excited. Alongside this center area was another huge couch and a big flatscreen tv, so we sat there to smoke our cigars - I bought a couple Padilla Dominus and Kevin got the Padilla Miami.

The young lady offered us coffee, but we had not yet had any Cuban coffee and neither one of us normally drinks coffee, so we declined. She then offered us scotch instead. Kevin still declined, but I agreed to have some scotch.

So we sat there and took in our first smoking experience in Little Havana. Not a bad way to start out - a huge beautiful place, really good cigars, and for me, some adult beverage as Kevin calls it.

After leaving there, we walked up and down the street a bit, checking out a couple of the other cigar establishments there. First, we walked into Top Cigars, where we passed a table full of older Cuban men playing dominos and then encountered the young lady working in the shop. One side of the shop had brand name cigars on shelves, while the other one had unbanded cigars which seemingly were rolled in the shop. My eyes were riveted by the biggest torpedos I've ever seen in my life - they must be 6-1/2 inches long with a ring gauge of 64 - so I bought two of those. Kevin went for something maduro. As we were deciding what to buy, the young lady led us over to a closed large chest near the back of the store. She opened it up, and it was filled with loose cigars! At first, I thought maybe they were rejects or seconds and therefore might be cheaper, but they were the same as the other cigars - they were the same things on the shelves, just loose and mixed up, and probably beat up from being mixed in with all those other cigars! Kind of a gimmicky place, but we were cool with it - when I smoke one of those huge torpedos, I'll let you know what I think.

Then we stopped in at the Bello shop. Pedro Bello Jr. was there, and he told us some of the history of his family, and how he and his father roll all the cigars in the shop. A very classy, well-appointed space, and the cigars looked really good too. He warned us that many of the shops on Calle Ocho say they roll their own cigars but they don't - only him, Bello, Don Pepin, El Credito and Titan de Bronze actually roll their own cigars right in their shops on Calle Ocho.

Kevin and I each bought a Gordo, about 5-1/2x60, and that became our evening smoke when we got back to our hotel patio - pretty nice! Mr. Bello also told us that he will be doing some taste testing up and down the east coast - I guess he wants to expand his distribution - and he wants us to email him so he can invite us when he is doing tasting in New York City. Pretty cool, huh? He also told us that with any of his cigars, we can buy them in unbanded bundles directly from him at huge discounts from what they would cost retail with bands in boxes.

I couldn't wait to come back to Calle Ocho, hopefully the next morning, to get to some of the businesses that were then closed (it was like 5:30 then) while they were open. I convinced Kevin that even though we expected Ade to arrive the next morning, we should go back to Little Havana and then perhaps he could catch up with us once he arrived.

We figured out how to get back to South Beach entirely by bus - the one that ran along Calle Ocho stopped a block from the one that went to South Beach - and we headed home, feeling like we had accomplished something really substantial. Kevin ate his leftovers for dinner, while I had another sandwich of coldcuts and condiments. But I had visions of Little Havana dancing in my head the whole time...