An old woman living in a tiny home, working slavishly over a hot stove, making strong coffee for three strangers.

A middle aged man with a tattered shirt and bloodshot eyes, giving a bear hug, speaking emphatically in a language his new found friend could not understand.

A beautiful single mother with bright eyes, writing directions in broken english to a neighborhood gathering later in the evening.

A heavy-set, optimistic neighbor serving bread and eggs, fruit and ham, walking gingerly though a buckling hallway without a ceiling to a table set with pewter and lace.

A laughing old man in the street, refusing to help with directions until the lost soul first "makes friendship" with him as he shows off prized photographs hung carefully on the splattered walls of his collapsing cantina.

An elderly, well-to-do couple pointing with pride from building to building, watching the reaction of their esteemed guests, eyes misting as they describe the loss of their beloved Fidel.

A busy driver with a tiny American flag hanging from his mirror, lustily sharing his black market successes, talking politics while racing between towns to show off the countryside.

A gangly weathered farmer nervously clutching a cardboard box in a dilapidated barn, fearfully selling sell clandestine cigars for three pesos each.

A tourist with a make-believe beard and an anxious heart, overwhelmed.

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You can read all the books you want, look at all the photographs, watch all the documentaries. Nothing prepares you for Havana. Yes, the classic automobiles, the majestic colonial architecture and the pulsing music are there, though all of it is so much more vibrant, more splendid, more everything, than depicted. And yes, the cobblestone streets and the crumbling asphalt ones too, literally teem day and night with life - the local poor, wide-eyed tourists, friendly hustlers, hookers, joyful children, multitudes of dogs and cats, purveyors of bread and goats and cheese and nuts, all that life undulating as one, ribbon-like, down narrow, dusty streets, tree-lined boulevards and along the gulf-soaked sea wall, the furtive, famous Malecon.

But the part of Havana, the essential part missed in all that preparation, is the rough, sweet touch of the hands of the old woman, the hard, friendly slap across the shoulders of the backstreet rummy, the desperate salesmanship of the new entrepreneur, the baleful yearning eyes of the beautiful young widow. To know Habana, to truly know the iconic, languid, bursting-at-the-seams Habana, you must start in Centro Habana, in the middle of Crespo street, between Trocadero and Colon, on a bright Wednesday afternoon, and look for three men seated at a rickety card table, trapped in an endless game of dominos, sharing a three dollar bottle of rum.