Cuba Diary - Ciego de Ávila, because why not?

Hello there, everyone! Since the semester just started I'm free to do whatever I want so I'm posting almost every second day by now, haha.
Today you get to see some pics of Ciego de Ávila, a Cuban city that really surprised us! My boyfriend and I didn't plan to visit this place, we actually wanted to travel to the end of the island and see the Guantanamo area but the lack of time forced us to stay closer to Havana. Thus we decided to see the island Cayo Coco because lots of other tourists and also Cubans told us to go. It's supposed to be one of Cuba's most beautiful places, and you will see, it definitely is (don't miss the next post)!
So we somehow tried to get from Trinidad to Cayo Coco and since Ciego de Ávila is on the way to the Cayos, we decided to stop there for a night and explore the city a little.

We were not disappointed! Ciego de Ávila is much bigger than we thought, more modern than most of the other cities we saw and very diverse! It doesn't only have lots of shops, restaurants (all very Cuban and not very touristy), and a city center that makes you feel like you're walking through a film studio, but also a very green, big and surprisingly peaceful park that gave us the chance to relax before heading to the Cayos (the tropical islands) the next day. The park was surely what I loved most about Ciego de Ávila, it was so nice to see so much green after Havana, Cienfuegos and Trinidad. We also found a super romantic bridge that looked just like stolen from a jungle. That's where we also found La Turbina, the first and only lake we saw on Cuba, right in the middle of the
Parque de La Ciudad. You can't imagine how relaxing it was for us to chill in the park without backpacks, and later slowly walk home watching all the people on the street, buying some fruit (like always :-D) and some super yummy Cuban chocolate ice cream. 

We stayed in a Cuban house again that night, which you can see at the end of this post. It was one of the biggest houses we had, we didn't only have the usual bedroom and bathroom  but also a huge living room with a bar, haha. The house owner happened to be a taxi driver and had a client waiting for him on the island we wanted to see the next day. Luckily he could take us, because there are no buses going to the island. So the next morning we got up at 5am and went to Cayo Coco with him, which is about one and a half hours from Ciego de Ávila. And guess what expected us there? PARADISE!
Stay tuned, xoxo

Having a blast - our first time in a bicitaxi, which is actually a pretty common transportation on Cuba!

That's how you go fishing in the park :-D

And this is where we bought our bread for three weeks, on the street :-D

Could have stayed another night in our big house