Around the hotel

The hotel is providing adequate food – the pineapple and bananas are particularly good, as you might expect. The omelettes made to order in the morning are excellent and Diva loved her ‘well done’ one.  A lot of the food is deep fried or battered or both. A sandwich with cheese, bacon, chicken, ketchup and fries was labelled ‘healthy option’!!

The first full day was an unusual one of heavy rain. Half the car park flooded and the approach road was deep in water.  But with that out of the way, the climate is very pleasant. Low 30s, with a breeze and some cloud seems constant day and night. The balcony is always in the shade, which makes it very pleasant. The view from the balcony is of Bridgetown and the cruise ships, which look impressive after dark at about 18:00. In the early mornings, a troop (??) of black horses is taken for a swim and only the heads can be seen for a while.

During the Little England tour, TSH and Diva saw many remnants of the sugar industry, which is now in decline. These included a windmill dating from the seventeenth century.

The driver on the Little England tour said that major hurricanes are rare here and the last one was in the 1950s. So why does the room have a document describing a four-phase hurricane alert system? At one level, guests are required to pack and then seal their suitcases in plastic bags, before proceeding to the hurricane shelter.

Bridegtown was disappointing – TSH and Diva were hoping to spend the day there. But there is really only one street, with a few international designer names and not really much else. There are a few interesting and horrifying plaques marking the place where the African people were disembarked and placed into cages. Names ‘Cave’ and ‘Shepherd’ on some shops reminded TSH and Diva of two of the names they heard yesterday at the plantation. So maybe the same old families still own a lot of the island.