1. You can stay in a centric place without spending so much
Yes, because a centric place is not always in the center, as in Europe, for example, where the business and living centers always match with the geographical one.
This is not the case for cities in North, Center and South America. Cuba is not an exception. In Havana City, there are two downtown, the Old Havana, that is the classical and historical and The Vedado, the modern center. Old Havana is located at the north-east of the city and The Vedado is at the north-center.
Old Havana is a municipality. But The Vedado is not a municipality, is a district a neighborhood. It is part of a larger area, the Plaza de la Revolución municipality, in short, Plaza.
If we only take into account these municipalities that are relevant to tourists, that is these that are northernmost, where is the true geographical center of Havana? In Plaza!
With "Plaza", we mean all the areas of the municipality that are not Vedado or Nuevo Vedado (another nieghborhood of Plaza which is even more residential). Plaza is not as important as The Vedado, Nuevo Vedado or Old Havana, but it's still a centric and important place, and, more importantly, it's near to everything! Plaza is exactly equidistant from Old Havana and The Vedado at the same time.
This makes it the ideal place to stay, because you are at the same distance from both worlds, you are still in at the center, you can find plenty of interesting places even in Plaza and, most importantly, the price per day for a chamber in Plaza is much cheaper than in Old Havana or The Vedado!
You can find here a complete description of these facts with all the interesting places the Plaza contains.
2. You have much cheaper alternatives than Viazul to trip the Island
Viazul is the official option that tourists have to tour the Island. But, in the Omnibus Terminal, which is located just next the Revolution Place, you can find the same buses called Astro, they travel all around Cuba and they are much less expensive than Viazul station. Furthermore, the Astros are the buses than Cuban use and they are not that bad as it seem at first sight. If you want to know the true Cuba, live and travel with Cubans, you have definitively to take Astros.
Aside from that, outside the Terminal there are many collective taxis. They are basically Old American cars which charge a small amount per person. For example taxis leaving to Pinar del Rio or Matanzas charges 5 cucs per person or 120 cups. For other destinations the price may vary, depending of the distance.
So you get two things at once: a cheaper travel to Viñales (for example) and a classic car trip for much less than ordinary city tour fees! This option is particularly suitable for groups, because you would travel together in any way. Obviously, you will not get a cabrio American classic car, but we can't have everything!
Notice that you can also find collective taxis outside Viazul, but they are not the same, they are more expensive and they try to get from you as much money as possible. I will not recommend them at all.
Also don't confuse between Omnibus Terminal and Viazul Terminal bus stations. The first is located in Boyeros avenue and 20 de Mayo street, the second is located in 26 Avenue and Zoologico street.
3. You can get medical care for free if you go to a urgency unit
Health care is free in Cuba for Cubans and permanent residents, as you probably know. Strangers, Cuban residents outside Cuba or temporary residents must go to hospitals such as Cira Garcőa and pay, but cheaper than any private clinic in the U.S. An ordinary consultation will cost you about 25 CUCs and the price will be variable for specialist consultations or studies.
But what you probably don't know is that you actually can get free medical care in Cuba! How? Obviously, it will not be free if you want a medical advice or consultation. But you can get free attention in any urgency unit!
In fact, if you tells the doctor you are suffering and you have pain, he/she will assist you in the majority of cases. You can give the doctor a tip if you want and if he/she will accept it. Most of time he/she will.
This is not a trick to game the Cuban health care system. It is just a tip to get at least a free medical prescription or an injection of some analgesic, if you are ill. You will not need to go to the Cira Garcőa hospital and pay 25 CUCs (or even more) for quick, fast and ordinary problems. I did it for years before becoming a permanent resident. Sure, I spoke Spanish perfectly as a native and I usually pretended to be a Cuban. If you are not like me, you still can get free medical care, just say you are having pain. This is the key. But sure, you must speak some Spanish or you are lost.
4. With a credit card you don't need the mandatory travel insurance to travel to Cuba
Another tip concerning health, but this time I mean the mandatory health care insurance that, since May 1, 2010, tourists must have in order to visit Cuba. Canadian citizens don't need it because they have a government health insurance card, which is called Carte Soleil in Quebec (not sure about the familiar name in the rest of Canada).
Anyway, if you don't get a travel insurance in your country and you arrive in Cuba without it, you will have to get a local one with Assistur for 3 CUCs per day, but it is still an annoyance, without consider that the price is very expensive if we compare it with any other competitive travel insurance in the market (and I say competitive because many are not!). But with this tip you will overcome this difficulty even more elegantly.
A lot of credit cards have a built-in health care or travel insurance. This one is accepted in Cuba and perfectly suitable! But most people don't know that and they actually get an extra insurance to travel to Cuba, an insurance they really don't need! Gold credit cards usually have all a travel insurance included. But you can get one even with an ordinary credit card for a fee much smaller than with a standalone travel insurance.
Furthermore you will save your time because you don't need to do anything, you already have a travel insurance with your credit card.
The good news here is that, even if the travel insurance of your credit card will not work in Cuba for any reason, this doesn't matter unless you have a real accident and you actually want to be covered. It you use your credit card travel insurance just to arrive in Cuba without annoying problems, Cuban authorities will not even check if it will really work!
Again, this is not a trick to game Cuban immigration. It is just a way to get out of an annoyance, because the 3-cuc per day travel insurance will not cover almost anything really useful, it is just another way to take some extra cash from you. This tip work very well I also used this one for years too. Who told me the trick? The immigration itself! But my credit card had an insurance that really worked, I did never game anybody.
5. The tourist State restaurants are much better than very expensive private ones
There are plenty of very good restaurants which will not be as expensive as the major private ones recently opened. Some chains such as Pizza Nova, A Prado y Neptuno restaurant and most hotel restaurants (I especially recommend from Meliá hotels), are nowadays much better than new private places which are super expensive and have nothing in common with the original concept of Paladar, a small, home restaurant supposed to be cheaper and simpler than an official full qualified one.
Don't trust completely new restaurants and commerces opened after 2011. Try them first and only if you really like them and you consider they are right both in prices and in customer care, adopt them. But in general, official restaurants or old guard private businesses (the ones opened in the '90s) are much better, they are much more professional and they have better prices.
Another choice are small cafeterias, they are simple food sellers which officially charges in CUPs. Not all of them are good, so you have to experiment each one in order to be sure to make a good choice. In general, I don't suggest them. The quality of the service and food is usually very poor, they are not always clean and drinks are usually not natural, they have enough sugar to get diabetes in two weeks (obvious, the simple water doesn't exit in these places).
6. In most places you can pay in CUPs as well but you don't need it
In Cuba there are two currencies, as you know. There is the CUC (Convertible Cuban Peso), the one similar to US dollar, and CUP (Cuban Peso). If you exchange CUPs to CUCs the rate exchange is 25/1. If you exchange CUCs to CUPs is 24/1. In some places the rates exchange is 23/1. This happen usually in places that usually charges in CUP, except fruit and vegetable markets.
It is not true that CUCs are for tourists and CUPs are for Cubans. In Cuba either tourists and Cubans may use both currencies, the difference is the place where you buy and the kind of goods and services you buying.
Recently, Cuba has begun accepting CUPs in most places that are in CUCs, especially tiendas and some cafeterias. But, what you probably don't know or realize is that in these places, it's still more convenient to pay in CUCs, not because you are a tourist, but because it's more expensive to pay in CUPs because the rate exchange will be 25-1 and not 24-1, so by paying in CUPs, you'll lose about 5 cents for each peso of each transaction.
Therefore it is still advisable to pay in CUCs in all the places where it is primarily accepted.
7. In Cuba, there are queues for everything but you can avoid many of them
Did you know? Etecsa closes at 7pm, immigration is open in the afternoon and most banks open the Saturdays each 15 days, just to mention a few examples. This means that you can go to these places in the afternoon or in the Saturday and you will not have to wait for a queue because nobody else will be there (most people in Cuba don't realize that these place are opened in these times, they have the mentality that everything must be done early in the morning, strange but true).
The general tip is the following: if you need to go to some place to make something there and this involves making any queue, try to investigate or guess the times where in this same place, there is not people.
This is quite evident and doesn't happen so much in your country, but it does happen quite often in Cuba.
Conclusion
Every time you visit a country, every time you are in one given place or you are living some giving situation, think always about other ways to do it, to work around it. There are always workarounds and there is always more than one way to do a thing.
So the general advice is the following: each time you will to travel, not only in Cuba, but in any other country as well, always try to analyze all possible ways to do a thing and try to always pick the best. Sometimes the choice depends on the experience or knowledge, some other time depends on intuition. What ever is your card, always analyze the situation carefully and then, play that card without hesitation.
