Taking a break in Barbados

After years of living in the beautiful but exhausting city New York, I decided to travel to find myself and take a break from work and life in general as I know it. It was time to experience something new and what's better than going to an exotic place like the Caribbean. I left JFK airport early on a Saturday morning and after a four and a half hour long flight I landed at Grantley Adams International Airport, Bridgetown, Barbados. When I first got out of the plane I felt the heat and it felt great, it is autumn in New York at the moment so getting to a place where the temperature still is over 25c is a huge plus. Bridgetown is the capital of Barbados and it’s placed in the southwest of the island. It lives about 96 000 people here and the average temperature all year is 26 C, all year!

I was staying at this gorgeous hotel called Hilton Hotel Barbados Bridgetown; it was amazing but very expensive. So I was only going to stay there for the first two days. And Alex was so nice to me so she let me stay at her place the rest of the holiday; she’s definitely a friend for life and we have so much in common.


I’ve been here for almost a week now and I love it so far. I haven’t gotten to relax much yet though because Bridgetown is less of a beach town and more like a place where you can see lots of things. The first day I spent mostly of my time near by the hotel because I was tired and not up for something really exhausting. So I decided why not eat something, and what something is better than the national dish of Barbados. It’s called Cou Cou and Flying Fish, when I read the name I didn’t quite understand what it was, but the nice waitress told me something about it. It came out that Cou Cou is a unique blend of cornmeal and okra mixed with salad, peppers and hot sauce and that Flying fish is the most common found fish in the warm seas around Barbados, and they usually fried it or steamed it.

So you just combine those two dishes and you get Cou Cou and Flying Fish and I must admit that it tasted really good and not too hot, even though before I went here it was written everywhere that all Barbados food is really hot.

After a good meal and a good night sleep I wanted to see more of this beautiful Island. I decided to go swimming with the turtles and it was a wonderful experience. I’ve always wanted to dive and it was as amazing as I thought it was going to be, I will definitely recommend it to everybody who like turtles and colorful fish. At first I was really scared that I would meet a shark, but the guys that had been diving for a lifetime hadn’t ever seen one in that area so it calmed me down a bit. It was so beautiful there under water, I don’t think I’ve seen so many colors at once before and it was awesome.

I also met Alex there who lived nearby but was originally from Connecticut, she was planning to only stay for two weeks but ended up moving here, so the day after she showed me the city.

The City here in Bridgetown is big and when Alex told me we were going to the shopping street I imagined more of a street with lots of shops and cafés, but no. We went to Broad Street which is the main street in Bridgetown, but it was mostly banks, departments stores and some small shops there, but it was nice seeing it anyways. Alex decided that we were going to go to the Caribbean Cigar Factory. It was quite interesting to learn how they made the cigars but I was quite sick of the smell in the end of that night. It was mostly inside a huge building and it was about 30 C outside so it got pretty hot in the end.

Barbados is the home for a real famous singer, Rihanna. I’m a huge fan of her so I was really hoping she would be home while I was in the country. But she was on a tour so the chance of bumping into her randomly wasn’t that huge. But I was staying in Bridgetown, her hometown so the thought of the fact that she had been walking up this streets was okay by me.

While I’ve been here I’ve been totally relaxed and it was good for a change. Tomorrow I’m going to take the boat to St. Lucia and it’s probably going to take a while, but it will be interesting. And when I’ve stayed there for a week or so I’m going to Jamaica to meet Edda and I can’t wait. I’ll defiantly be back here in Barbados and now I know a place to stay as well, at Alex’s place.

- Maren