If Havana is one of those places like Rangoon or Tbilisi that you've always vaguely been meaning to visit but never quite got round to, better make it sooner rather than later. Change is in the air as Fidel Castro steps down as Cuba's leader.

The capital is perched on that delicate cusp between the engagingly ramshackle and the ruthlessly packaged, with the telltale signs of its inevitable decline into mass tourism already apparent.

At the restaurant we were in one night in the old town, the crooner chose to give us Beatles rather than Cuban songs and, on the streets, sleek people-carriers with air-con and tinted windows are beginning to replace the famed, vintage American, gas-guzzling taxis bristling with chrome and fins - and fenders that are as wide as shop fronts.

It isn't just the cars that fix Havana in its relaxed 1950s time warp. Since the revolution in 1959 little in the old town has changed, whereas the hotels in resorts such as Varadero can and do compete with five-star establishments anywhere in the world.

Cuba finally goes five-star

Cuba is set to be overrun by glitzy resorts. But it already has a couple of five-star hotels

• Why you should go to Cuba now

At home in Cuba

Eschew the hotels and take advantage of the country’s excellent casas particulares

• You haven't been to Cuba yet?

• Daily Doc: currency in Cuba

• Cuba up in smokes

BACKGROUND

• Off the beaten track in Cuba

• Our MI5 writer in Cuba

• In search of Cuba's best coral

• You haven't been to Cuba yet?

• A prison tour of Cuba

Related Links

• Off the beaten track in Cuba

What's more, they're pretty much interchangeable with every other resort hotel from Fiji to Fuengirola. Next time I go I shall stay in Havana.

On the whole cities are not my first choice for a holiday. I'm a Londoner, I know about urban culture, theatres, art galleries, museums, posh restaurants. That's why we opted for a two-centre break, three days in Havana to see the sights followed by four days on the beach in Varadero.

The only official sights we got round to seeing in Havana were a couple of tombs in the Necropolis, one of a famous bridge player, the other of an alleged miracle worker, and the outsides of the Museum of the Revolution and a cigar factory. I was content to wander through the streets around the cathedral breathing in the atmosphere, often pretty whiffy, and people watching.

Substitute the Shwedagon pagoda for St Christopher's Cathedral and it's what I did on my first visit to Rangoon. Rangoon reminds me of Havana: because they don't run into many tourists, the locals retain their national identity, which for Cubans and Burmese alike means warmth without sycophancy and friendliness that neither imposes nor intrudes. Even the beggars in Cuba are laidback.

One old lady with an enormous red flower in her hair that doubled as a sunshade gently tapped my elbow as I was choosing my postcards and proffered a palm. I said I would have some change later, after I'd bought them, but she just shrugged, smiled, wished me “felicidad” and wandered off, the red flower bobbing jauntily.

When Cuba's subsidies from the Soviet Union dried up with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Castro swallowed his ideological pride and allowed the tour operators in. Tourism has revolutionised the island's economy; it is now Cuba's biggest money-spinner. So far Havana has been spared. In the 1930s our hotel, The Inglaterra, with its vast lobby, marble floors and chandeliers, would have been described by its mainly American clientele as “swell”.

I wish I could describe its present condition as “shabby chic”. It isn't, it's just shabby. Our room had a curious smell, somewhere between dry rot and wet dog. The huge antique air-conditioning apparatus blocked the door to the balcony - but maybe just as well. It looked dodgy - though you'd get a good view of the Opera House next door as you fell. For all its discomfort and appalling food (you don't go to Cuba for the cuisine) I'd rather have stayed at The Inglaterra, which is after all the oldest hotel in Cuba and a national monument, than a new place with all mod cons.

Schoolchildren toting satchels, shoeshine boys, street musicians, strikingly beautiful girls in bright, tight pedal pushers outlining their big, bouncing bottoms, canary-yellow scooter taxis, two-tone saloons that might once have been driven by Bonnie and Clyde, old men selling cigars, young men flogging toy cameras made from drinks cans, nuns moving from brilliant sunshine to shadow, minimal traffic, palm trees, statues of martyred heroes - from my table on the pavement outside The Inglaterra I could see it all.

Havana has the best schools and hospitals in the Caribbean. It has glorious Spanish colonial architecture and a pace of life that encourages ambling. It has had the world's longest-serving and probably most admired (except by America) revolutionary leader. Who knows how far and how fast things will change now that Castro's gone? Enjoy it while it lasts.

Need to know

A seven-night holiday with Caribtours (020-7751 0660, www.caribtours.co.uk) starts from £1,312pp, based on two people sharing. The price includes three nights at the Saratoga in Havana in a deluxe patio room with continental breakfast and four nights at Paradisus Varadero in a junior suite on an all-inclusive basis, as well as flights and transfers.

Times recommends

• Travel advice: what to do if your flight is disrupted
• Top 10 unmissable events in 2010
• Seven spa breaks for January