Key West—America’s Original Cigar City

Above, the Cigar City USA store in Key West. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Two years ago, I stopped in at the Cigar City USA store in Key West, Florida to pick up a few Oliva cigars before our cruise continued on down to Havana, Cuba.

While there, I chatted a bit with the store's owner, Mark Cesani about cigars and his cigar store Indian. I posted a blog about the visit.

This morning, I found that Key West was once known as Cigar City USA, not just the name of a cigar store. Cigar Aficionado posted an article on the history of cigar-making in Florida, focusing on Tampa and Key West.

They begin with:

Tampa’s Cigar City Brewing has won numerous awards and gold medals, and you can order its draft beers at bars all over Key West. While the beers are quite tasty, the irony of this libation is lost on most visitors. While Tampa’s Ybor City, a neighborhood rich in Cuban American traditions, is known as America’s cigar industry epicenter, the earlier version of Cigar City, U.S.A. was not Tampa, but rather the nickname for Key West, the southernmost point in the nation. At its height in 1890, there were at least 80 factories and estimates of cigars hand rolled here run as high as 100 million annually.

To read more, go here.

Cuba Travel: The Latest

Above, a package containing cigars I bought in Havana last year. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Travel to Cuba is tricky at best for Americans, but it still can be done.  (As of June 5, 2019, cruises to Cuba are no longer available due to travel restrictions imposed by the United States. I got to take a cruise two months before the ban. Source: Cruiseweb.com)

That said, due to the pandemic, Cuba has been closed off but is now starting to reopen.

According to Travel + Leisure:

After seven months of tight lockdowns, Cuba started loosening its coronavirus restrictions on Monday, hoping to restart its economy — especially its $3 billion tourism industry, according to the Associated Press.

In an announcement made last Thursday, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said 13 of the country’s 16 provinces can start reopening for tourism this week, NBC reports. However, the capital of Havana will not be part of this initial move, as it suffered a spike in August, according to CNN. The Havana Airport will remain closed for now.

Strict mask and physical distancing measures remain in place, but those who may have been in contact with possible coronavirus cases will no longer be put in isolation facilities, as they had been, and can isolate at home, Marrero said.

Since April 2, all air and sea travel to the island nation had been banned, requiring government permission for anyone arriving or leaving the country. Travel restrictions were also put in place within the country, according to CNN, with tourism of any kind restricted, including the closure of bars, restaurants, hotels, and beaches.

To read more, go here. 

Above, yours truly and Mitch Geriminsky at the cruise line terminal in Havana last year before the ban.

Even if one is able to visit Cuba, Cuban rum and cigars cannot be brought into the U.S. at present. I happened to luck out in getting rum and cigars before the current restrictions were enacted last year. 

According to ViaHero:

There are 11 categories of approved travel to Cuba for Americans, all of which allow you to travel to Cuba legally. 

• To travel under any one of the 11 categories, including the Support for the Cuban People category (the most popular) you simply need to declare that category when booking flights and lodging (as well as during re-entry into the US). 

• To travel legally, make sure to adhere to the requirements of that category.

On September 23, Cigar Aficionado posted:

Americans will no longer be allowed to come back home with Cuban cigars, Cuban rum, or to stay in Cuban hotels, President Trump announced in a White House speech today. New U.S. sanctions leveled against Cuba have removed the permission for Americans traveling abroad to return with Cuba’s most famous exports, and also ban future U.S. travelers from staying at any government-owned hotels on the island—a restriction that essentially forces all future U.S. visitors to stay in Airbnb-style lodgings in private homes, since the Cuban state holds full or majority ownership in all Cuban hotels.

The new laws take effect tomorrow, September 24.

Above, the bottle of rum I bought in Havana before the ban. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

There you have it!