The cats at the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West Florida

In 1935, Ernest Hemingway received a cat named "Snowball" while living and writing in Key West, Florida. "Snowball" had paws featuring six toes and became the first of a long line of felines that continues to make the Hemingway Home and Museum one of the most popular visitor attractions in the Florida Keys. Today, around 50 cats remain on the property.

Inside Ernest Hemingway’s home (Finca vigia) in Cuba

It has been seventy years since author Ernest Hemingway first moved to Cuba. However, his home there where he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls and the Old Man and the Sea is now in the process of being restored.

Michael Palin's Hemingway adventure in Havana: El Floridita and the Hotel Ambos Mundos

Michael Palin visits Ernest Hemingway's old drinking haunts (El Floridita) and where he used to stay (Hotel Ambos Mundos) during his visits to Havana, Cuba, in the 1930s.

Great Museums of Havana: Curious about Cuba

Produced for Public Television by Great Museums TV, the episode “Curious about Cuba” not only featured the museums of Cuba and the City of old Havana, it also featured an exploration of Ernest Hemingway’s life at the Hemingway House Museum, Finca Vigia, which was his home from 1940 to 1960.

Ernest Hemingway's papers arrive at the JFK Library

Despite the strained relations between the USA and Cuba, the curators of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and the Castro regime have managed to find common ground over Ernest Hemingway. In fact, the Boston Globe noted in an October 29, 2009 article that Cuba has shared copies of 3,000 letters and documents from the Hemingway archives at the country’s Ministry of Culture. This material filled a hole in the library’s collection, which probably contains the most comprehensive body of Ernest Hemingway’s writings.
The Boston Globe further noted that:

The initial collection of the author’s work made its way to the library after Hemingway’s fourth wife, Mary, received permission from the Kennedy administration to travel to Cuba after Hemingway committed suicide in 1961 in Idaho, three months after the disastrous assault at the Bay of Pigs helped usher in the decades-long pall over US-Cuban relations. The Cuban regime had told Mary that they intended to make the house Hemingway left just outside Havana, known as the Finca Vigía, into a museum. They allowed her to visit and ship his many papers and artwork on a shrimp boat to Tampa.

The entire Boston Globe article can be read here.

A tour of the Ernest Hemingway Birthplace and Museum.

In this episode of Chicagoland's Comcast Community Connection, the Ernest Hemingway Birthplace and Museum is featured.

Michael Palin's Hemingway adventure in Uganda (Africa)

In this episode of Michael Palin’s Hemingway Adventure, Palin visits Uganda to see the site on the River Nile where Hemingway survived his African airplane crash.

Ernest Hemingway’s house in Ketchum, Idaho

Taylor Paslay, the caretaker of Ernest Hemingway's Ketchum, Idaho home where Hemingway committed suicide, gives a special tour of the house.

A tour of the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West

Here is an amateur video tour inside the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West, Florida. The tour takes approximately 1 hour to 1 hour 30 minutes and it includes a tour guide. Entry is US$7 per person.

1930s Havana Cuba as Ernest Hemingway saw it

An Ernest Hemingway Daiquiri Recipe

In this episode of Imbibe Sips, Jeffrey Morgenthaler explains how to make Ernest Hemingway's favorite daiquiri or Papa Doble.

Here is one Hemingway Daiquiri recipe:

6 tablespoons fresh grapefruit juice
2 ounces white rum
1 teaspoon maraschino liqueur (or maraschino cherry juice)
1 teaspoon fresh lime juice
½ cup crushed ice
Slice of lime
In a blender, blend all ingredients at high speed until thick. Serve in chilled martini glass, garnished with slice of lime.
From Eating Cuban
Nutrition facts per serving: 168 calories, 0 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 9 g carbohydrates, 0 g protein, 1 mg sodium, 0 g fiber

Here is a second Hemingway Daiquiri recipe from when Hemingway drinks with A. E. Hotchner in his book Papa Hemingway:

2 jiggers Bacardi or Havana Club rum
(1 jigger = 1 1/2 ounces)
Juice of 2 limes
Juice of 1/2 grapefruit
6 drops of maraschino (cherry brandy)
Fill a blender one-quarter full of ice, preferably shaved or cracked. Add the rum, lime juice, grapefruit juice and maraschino. Blend on high until the mixture turns cloudy and light-colored (See Islands in the Stream, page 281 for a more Hemingway-esque description).
Serve immediately in large, conical goblets

Ernest Hemingway’s birthplace in Oak Park, Illinois

Here is another quick tour of Ernest Hemingway birthplace. Its located at 339 N. Oak Park Avenue, Oak Park, IL 60302 while the Hemingway Museum is located at 200 N. Oak Park Avenue.

La Bodeguita del Medio: Home of the real Mojito cocktail and one of Ernest Hemingway's favorite drinks

Michael Palin visits La Bodeguita del Medio in Havana, Cuba, to learn about the Mojito cocktail and Why Ernest Hemingway once said: “Liquor is my best friend and my severest critic!”

The Finca Vigia Foundation brings better relations with Cuba through Hemingway

Since 2002, the Finca Vigia Foundation has worked with the Cuban government to preserve Ernest Hemingway’s literary legacy in Cuba. In fact and in this June 25, 2009 Boston Globe article by Jenny Phillips and Bob Vila, the co-chairs of the Boston-based Finca Vigia Foundation, it was noted that:

Hemingway’s memory has done what no political leader on either side of the Florida Straits was able to achieve: It has created a joint working group of Cubans and Americans sanctioned by both governments to preserve Hemingway’s home, a timeless, literary shrine on the outskirts of Havana. The focus is purely cultural and collaborative, and carefully sidesteps any political landmines.This work has not been easy. The Bush administration, which placed the most restrictive policies ever on the American embargo, nearly shut the project down. The Cubans, who have kept the Hemingway home as a museum, had to overcome their long-held fears of North American exploitation.

The entire Boston Globe article can be read here.

The Ernest Hemingway legacy bonds Cuba and the USA

In this March 13, 2009 BBC segment, Michael Voss noted how the USA and Cuba are working together to preserve and protect the legacy of Ernest Hemingway. Scholars will be given access to restored archive papers due to a lift on trade embargoes between the USA and Cuba.

Ernest Hemingway’s legacy helps to heal 50 years divisions between the USA and Cuba

In this January 31, 2009, article for the Scotsman, it was noted how the Ernest Hemingway legacy has helped to heal 50 years of divisions between the USA and Cuba when copies
of a mostly unseen archive of Hemingway's years in Cuba, including thousands of letters, notes and other documents, were sent from Finca Vigia in Cuba to the John F. Kennedy Library in Massachusetts. It was noted that:

The papers were long hidden away in the basement of Hemingway's estate at Finca Vigia, Cuba." It's a wonderful treasure trove and it's wonderful it will be available," said Professor Sandra Spanier, editor of the Hemingway Letters Project at Pennsylvania State University." There has never really been a biographer who had access to the materials of Hemingway's life in Cuba.
"That was a third of his life, a half of his writing life, and this is tremendously important." The materials include corrected proofs of The Old Man and the Sea, a film script based on the novel and correspondence from fellow authors Sinclair Lewis and John Dos Passos."
There are letters among these documents that have been in Cuba since 1961," Prof Spanier added. "It is tremendously intriguing and exciting."

The entire Scotsman article can be read here.