Barbados Diary: Day 5

This day we decided to do something touristy. Well, sort of. We joined a group from the hotel doing a tour of the island in a minivan with flowing rum punch and a driver who told some of the worst jokes I've heard since school. This did make it quite an enjoyable ride, as long as you didn't cringe at everything he said.

First stop was Speightstown where we had a brief look around before the bus set off to Cherry Tree Hill. This high point of the island lets you look over a lot of the land to the far distant coastline. It is worth seeing, but I would never come out this far just for the view...

What we came up here in this bus for was to get to St Nicholas Abbey, which is otherwise difficult to reach with public transport. This is an old plantation manor, which then started with rum production and has been one of the most visited sights on the island ever since.

Doing a tour of the house gives you a good history of the island, the people and reason why rum production came about. The video is definitely worth watching, as it's taken on original film from when camera technology had just gotten started, and gives some great insights into how people dressed and behaved in that time.

Of course, walking around the grounds and reading about the history is all fine and good. But what everyone comes here for is the rum, and the tasting session that accompanies each tour.

Trying the different types of rum they produce with different ages is pure indulgence, and the narrative about it very helpful in understanding why they have such different flavours. The size of the glasses they give are not for the feint hearted though, so don't expect to be below the legal limit for driving once you've finished.

After having seen and tasted everything on offer at the Abbey, we got a taxi back to Speightstown in order to get the bus back to our hotel.

We soon realised that around 3pm is not a good time to travel on the state buses. Child after child got on the bus after their school day had finished, and soon there was barely room to breath. Along with the fact that the sun was beating down with around 30 degrees, we decided to get off in Holetown to have some lunch (and some air).

As this is the posh part of the island (weird it's got that name then) the only places you could eat would be at very expensive restaurants, or the stalls in the local mall. So you can guess where we headed.

The meal was very nice indeed. We watched the locals putting up the Christmas decorations whilst savouring the flavours of our staple food, before heading back on a (much emptier) bus to our hotel.

After a bit of a siesta, our thoughts came back to food again. We were going to try the place across the road from the hotel, but after waiting to be seated for a long time, to then have to wait a long time to get a menu, we gave up and decided that we'd go next door to the italian place called Mama Mia.

Despite not being typical from Barbados, we enjoyed the meal and so could sleep well again.