Day 5 Today we will take a walk to Old Havana Square. We met in the Hotel lobby to start our day. As we approach the area I notice the streets are crowded with people dancing in the street. The streets are paved with what looks like bricks but a closer look shows they are not bricks but wood blocks stained with brick color. In the town square the road turns to a circle with […]
Day 4 We were up bright and early for a little Cuban Coffee and a Cuban Cigar before hitting the road back to Havana. The first stop was the El Laguito Factory, the birthplace of Cohiba which was in 1968. A palace of a building, looks kind of like an old Southern Mansion which was unquestionably the most impressive looking cigar factory from the outside thus far for sure. This is where Cohiba, Behike and […]
Trip to Cuba – Day 3 I got up in plenty of time for breakfast and decided not to go off on my own in this city. I took the opportunity to talk with the waitress a bit because she spoke better English than I did Spanish. She seemed happy and said so… she liked her life in Cuba and the closeness with her family and neighbors. Although she had never been to the United […]
Day 2 Monday March 9, 2015 I skipped breakfast (that almost never happens) and chose to walk around a little before meeting with the group. “American” and “Cohiba” the Cuban people asked me as apparently I stuck out like a sore thumb. They were not asking for a hand-out or begging for my money, they wanted to sell me something. They had cigars, what locals call “street cigars” made at their homes with either their […]
My Trip to Cuba (legally) by David Garofalo My adventure began on December 27, 2014 when we interviewed Colon Ganley on The Cigar Authority podcast. Colin is the former editor of Cigar Journal Magazine and is now the owner of Twin Engine Coffee Company based out of Nicaragua. Colin also is the owner of a company called Cigar Tourism (www.CigarTourism.com) where he has put together trips to Nicaragua, Honduras and the Dominican Republic for years, […]
While part of the show title this week seems like a bad Aerosmith Song, we will kick back and light up Pi on Pi Day, 3.1415. A limited edition cigar, available at 2guyscigars.com. We will also discuss the trip of a lifetime as David Garofalo returns from Cuba and tells us what gifts he brought back for us to smoke and we will find out how much rum he drank but more importantly what some […]
Taping the show on a short week is always fun, because you only get a day or two of content to prepare. The result can be anything from our greatest show, to the worst one ever. And on a short week, the risk of a train wreck is all the more possible. Today we welcome cigar smoking Comedian Jay Grove to the show, and lets just say we haven’t had the best luck with comedians […]
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene a long-running battle between General Cigar and Cubatobaco. The battle has been ongoing over the Cohiba trademark. In refusing to hear an appeal by General Cigar Company the Supreme Court left intact a ruling in favor of Cubantobaco made in June by the U.S Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. General Cigars which is owned by Scandinavia Tobacco Group uses the name Cohiba in the USA while […]
Yesterday saw the introduction of a bill to lift the Cuban Embargo in the Senate. The bipartisan bill, S 491 was read into the record by sponsor Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnestoa) and is entitled, “Freedom to Export to Cuba Act.” If passed it would remove the legal barriers that prohibit Americans from doing business in Cuba. The bill how will not eliminate the human rights laws that are contained in the Helms-Burton Act that passed […]
For those of you who don’t know I work for Two Guys Smoke Shop during the week maintaining their website and doing mail order. I also work for The Cigar Authority which is a completely separate entity. Yesterday, for the first time in 30 years Two Guys Smoke Shop had to close because of the blizzard that hit New England. In Nashua where I work we got 31″ of snow while Salem and Seabrook each […]