British travel writer Claire Boobbyer has been writing about Havana for almost two decades. She first went to Cuba in 1998 to see why the Christmas Day public holiday had been banned by Fidel Castro. With a mum-made Christmas cake in tow, she was quizzed by Cuban customs about the cake's cultural connotations and required to have the cake X-rayed. Within days she fell in love with the country and now divides her time between Havana and London. She writes for a wide variety of magazines, newspapers, online sites and guidebooks including Frommer's and Time Out, and manages the website insidecuba.co.