My friend and I wanted a sunshine break and because my friend had zillions of Virgin Air Miles we booked a “cheaper than usual but in no way cheap” Virgin Holidays break at the British Colonial Hotel in Nassau. (See my separate review about the actual hotel). The Virgin flight was good, on time and the food was good. Eight and a half hours later we were in Nassau and it was a 25 min taxi ride to our Hotel. I have been to the Bahamas before but went to Eleuthera which is a much less commercialised island. I had known that Nassau was the cruise ship terminal but I hadn’t expected our hotel to look out over the cruise ships themselves! Watching them arrive and leave each day (usually 4-6 different cruise ships!) was fascinating. Seeing a huge cruise ship doing what looked like a three point turn made it look like they were going to run aground on the Hotel’s beach! Anyway, anyone who has read my previous reviews may remember that I am still recovering from an awful Caribbean cruise experience last January which I am sure left me with PTSD! No, I am not a fan of cruises!
Because of the thousands of passengers who disembark from the ships, downtown Nassau seems to run on a timetable to suit the ship clientele. The three shopping streets around the Hotel are open as soon as the first ship docks and starts releasing its (mainly American) passengers. From then on the shops are heaving, the restaurants are full and the bars fit to bursting. About 5pm the cruise ships sound their horns to call their guests back and the shops, restaurants and bars start to close down. We found, after 6.30 pm it was almost impossible to find somewhere to eat. Most people seem to eat in their hotels but the hotel restaurants are really expensive. Through talking to the locals we found a few hidden Bahamian restaurants (literally up dark staircases or hidden away up alleys). We had a nice Bahamian meal at The Captain’s Deck where the staff plied us with free shots between courses. These are where the locals eat so you know the food will be good. (Unfortunately both my friend and I are vegetarian so we didn’t sample their fish, seafood or their world famous conch. But they did manage to come up with a tasty meal for us. We also found a rather overpriced restaurant “The London Tapa’s and Cocktail Bar”. The staff told us they had styled it on a London restaurant but, being a Londoner I can tell you I have never seen a London restaurant like this! It had an interesting menu but it wasn’t actually tapas style and the only English thing about it was the red telephone box outside! We also ate in a few of the local Hotels, the Margaritaville Beach Resort nearby was our favourite, they did great pizzas and had a separate nice restaurant that did great salads.
Regarding trips around the Island, we found that local buses were “interesting” (one had a door that flew open as we went round corners!) and much much cheaper than getting taxis. They didn’t seem to run to a particular timetable but we only had to pay a couple of dollars to go to the other side of the Island. We got one to Paradise Island where the famous Atlantis Hotel is. We had planned to spend the day there but to use their beach we would have had to pay nearly 200 dollars! (This does include the water park and the Aquarium but neither of us were keen on those!). So, instead, we found the nearby local public beach which was stunning and we spent a lovely day sunbathing and swimming for the grand sum of $10 each for the sun loungers!
We also booked a trip to swim with pigs! I was very disappointed in that! I had read that there was an Island in the Bahamas where some wild pigs (maybe left there after a ship wreck) would come out to boats and swim with people. So we booked a day trip and went by boat to Rose Island. It then became obvious that these were not pigs that had lived naturally. I really believe that once this type of trip became a “thing”, locals rushed out to buy some pigs and put them on every island! Rose Island was stunning but it was full of us “pig swimming enthusiasts”. We were given a voucher for a meal and drink and then, after eating, we were told to stand in the water and the pigs pen was opened and they ran down the rocks to the beach looking for the carrots we had all been given! They could swim but were happy to just grab the carrot and head back up the beach! Not quite what I expected and I did not like the way the guys picked up the piglets to hand to the tourists for their selfies! I would suggest you avoid this trip.
Other trips we did were a bus to Cable Beach (which is where the Sandals hotel is), this was nice but very basic and the Sandals staff are not interested in letting you in to use their facilities! (I was lucky that one of the security guards took pity on me and let me pop in to use their loos!). We also hired a taxi to do a tour of the whole island but he seemed to think we wanted a retail trip and after a visit to the Rum Cake Shop (lovely), the Rum Distillery (strong) and the Tea Factory we asked him to concentrate more on the sites and less on the shops! We visited Fort Charlotte and Fort Fincastle which are small and mainly ruins but interesting nonetheless.
The Bahamians seem to love the English and we only found them welcoming and helpful. They are lovely people and I would like to go back but it would probably be to one of the other islands where I am not going to bump into a million Americans pouring off their ships!
