Cuba Vacation 2018 with my Mom & Dad, my daughter Emily and my amazing Comrade & Partner Suzanne

Without any doubt, the highlight of my full year in 2018, and certainly the most memorable moments of this past year, were found during a 15-day trip this past February & March that my dear partner/Comrade & wife Suzanne MacNeil and I took to Cuba with my parents (Elizabeth & Elwood Tracy), which began in Havana, involved a lovely day trip to Viñales, Cuba to visit tobacco farms and the countryside, and later travels to Cienfuegos and Trinidad, Cuba for several days of a road trip adventure.
On the fourth day of our Cuban vacation, I was delighted to have the ability to fully and completely surprise my Mom & Dad by flying their favourite granddaughter, my amazing daughter Emily Johnson-Tracy, to Havana to join us for the remaining eleven days of our intergenerational Cuban family vacation and roadtrip.
My parents were shocked and surprised to find Emily sitting in the lobby bar of the Iberostar Parque Central Hotel in central Havana (located only a block from the lovely two-bedroom apartment in Centro Habana, Cuba that we had rented for 15 nights and which was our “home base” for that trip).
Following a trip on the double-decker tourist bus around parts of Havana, we invited my parents to join us for a cappuccino or a mojito at the Hotel Iberostar Parque Central lobby bar before dinner, and they discovered Emily (who had flown in only hours before) sitting and enjoying a beverage in the lobby bar on her own.
Many tears were forthcoming by all of us as my parents shock wore off at seeing their granddaughter unexpectedly in Cuba and as she invited us to join her table for drinks.
We continued our vacation over the following week-and-a-half with a roadtrip by collective taxi to Trinidad, Cuba for several days, and spent some time in Cienfuegos before returning to Havana to continue exploring, as a family, my favourite city and all it has to offer.
Suzanne and I will be returning to Cuba for a few weeks in early January 2019, sadly this time without my parents or my daughter.
We will be re-tracing the steps of our February/March 2018 adventures in Trinidad and Cienfuegos, Cuba (and possibly Viñales again for a day or two), and will also spend several days exploring Varadero,, Matanzas, Clara Santa (for our first-ever visit to the Che Guevara mausoleum), and Sancti Spiritus, and then will be returning to Havana for the final ten days of our January vacation, where the Havana International Jazz Festival will begin as we arrive.
But no trip could ever be as special as the two-weeks-and-a-bit spent in Cuba with my Mom & Dad, my amazing daughter Emily, and my incredible partner/Comrade/wife Suzanne this past February and March.
It remains not only the highlight of my year, but a lifelong memory I will always treasure.