This was our third visit to Barbados since we started cruising but we had not taken an island tour since our visit in 1986 for our honeymoon. Not wanting to plan a tour through the ship, we walked through the port and caught an island tour on our own – $30 each for a 3 hour tour.

David, our driver, was a great guide who gave us lots of local information during the tour.

  • There are nearly 300,000 residents on the island
  • The only wild animals are mongoose and green monkeys
  • Tourism is their main industry
  • George Washington used to live on the island when he was 24 years old and held lots of power regarding island laws
  • Lots of taxes on the island – taxes on everything. Yet so many things (health care, schools, university) are “free” according to the locals. The way I see it, they are paying for those things through taxes. They aren’t free. Interesting take on it.
  • If you don’t paint your house, you don’t have to pay taxes on it because the government doesn’t consider it “finished.” You can live in it but if it isn’t painted you don’t have to pay taxes. Needless to say there are quite a few unpainted houses.

He took us from one side of the island to the other and all in between. There are beautiful parts and not so beautiful parts.

The Atlantic side is the poor side and the Caribbean side is the prestigious side. There were places to rent on the Atlantic side but there is no swimming allowed in the Atlantic. The currents are too strong and looking at the coast you can certainly see that.

Personally, I don’t see the point in coming to the Caribbean and being on a beach where you can only dip your toes in the water. But maybe that’s just me. He took us by Tiger Woods’ house on a golf course. We drove by Rihana’s mansion. All in all it was a great tour but neither one of us saw anything that would make us want to stay on this island for a week. Good to know.

Our last stop was a little bar/restaurant on the beach. At least they called it a beach. Not much beach from my point of view …

Back on the ship we grabbed some lunch at the buffet, then went back down to port to see what we could find. Bob was looking for a t-shirt and a hat. He found a hat. Not much to be found in the t-shirt area for either of us. Maybe next time.

Since we had some free time a nap seemed to be a good idea. Sure felt good. Again, there wasn’t anything on the menu for the MDR that grabbed us so we went back to the buffet again for dinner. We both got salads and the stir-fry again. There’s so much to choose from it doesn’t seem like we’re going for the same kind of stuff over and over. After dinner we went to Café al Bacio for some tea while we waited for the 9pm show seating.

David Martin was the act tonight. Hailing from England, he sings a little bit of everything from Neil Diamond, Stevie Wonder, Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, Michael Buble, Josh Groban and more. He is very talented and amazing at what he does. We knew very little of the songs he chose but could certainly appreciate his talent.

Being the fuddy duds we are, we came back to the cabin instead of going to the party up on the pool deck. Oh well, we have an early morning tomorrow – another island tour. Night!!

Next day … Grenada