I was just asked if I want to go to cuba at the begining of 2013.
MUST.NOT.GET.EXCITED.
These things always fall apart when I get excited.
probably wont even happen.
I'm totally not going to spend the rest of the night googling places to stay.
GAH!
Also... I"m drinking wine. And I thought I would special it up by mixing it with some ginger ale, cause I was too lazy to go buy the stuff I would actually need for sangria.
"Routine screening upon entry into Canada includes the question, Have you ever been convicted of a crime? If you have been convicted of impaired driving - even if no collision was involved - you may be denied entrance. Even with no other criminal violations. Think carefully. Don't lie about any convictions, regardless of how 'trivial'. This is especially true if you're entering from the U.S. Increased cooperation between Canada and U.S., as part of post-911 security measures, means that the border agent could already have access to criminal records. Lying/forgetting about a conviction could get you barred from entry into Canada for many years."
I know of a couple of 'Merkans that have been to Cuba. They had to be rather sneaky about it, though. I think they went through Canada going and returning. Rather circuitous.
I was at Gitmo for 6 weeks when I was on my ship in the Navy. The Navy does drills and training there. We were not allowed off the base but I had a slammin' time just the same.
Our former landlord was a Cuban who lived 80% of the year in the States. He had changed his citizenship to the USA. He only was "allowed" to visit his family in Cuba every few years and he always make sure to start the trip in Ecuador.
When I was reading up about traveler information last night, I discovered that the US has a law stating that Canadians who are living in the US are allowed to go to Cuba, but they are not allowed to spend any money there.
When I took the bar exam, the big three hour practice essay was about the Cuban embargo. If I remember right, what's prohibited is the spending money in Cuba, but there is a presumption if you go there that you spent money, which by default prevents being able to travel there.
Don't quote me because this was like 10 years ago, though.
It's all pretty silly, isn't it? A ridiculous national policy to keep happy an important voting block in a critical state by supporting their blood feud? For how many years now?
Without the cold war, we have nothing to fear from Cuba, and we prevented the missiles from getting there anyway. 11 million people (about the population of metro Los Angeles) with a GDP of just under $61 B (Ironically, that amount is almost exactly how much money we'd gain in the federal budget if we raised taxes on just those earning more than $250k per year. Here's a bunch of what we could buy with that:http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/what-does-60-billion-buy/).
We should have dropped the cuba thing when the Berlin Wall came down. That it still exists is ridiculous in my mind.
