Bar Plaza

Description:

• If you travel enough in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, you'll occasionally stumble across the kind of old-fashioned bar that Hemingway used to celebrate. Macho, unpretentious, and nostalgic, with a history going back to the 1940s, and murals that advertise products from now-defunct companies, it virtually drips with a sense of frozen time. High-ceilinged, shadowy, and cool, even on the hottest day, it might be a direct transplant from colonial Havana or Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. There's a pool table in the corner, an old-fashioned cement trough that functions as the men's urinal, and a staff and stoic regular patrons that indeed show their age. No food of any kind is served -- only drinks. Beer costs about $3.50. Open daily 9am to 9pm.

• © Frommer's 2013