The Essentials of Nassau, The Bahamas in one day

The Bahamas… sounds like the ultimate vacation destination, doesn’t it? Don’t want to sound condescending or anything, but for us it was just the first stop on the cruise that we booked to see Cuba. After some investigation, it turned out to be the best option from a price-quality perspective. And so we were adding two additional stops to our trip, of which the first one was The Bahamas, where the ship docked in Nassau.

We arrived at 8am. After the ship’s paperwork had been finished, we could go and explore at about 8.30am. It was raining at that moment in time – we saw the grey dark clouds moving over the island from where the ship was laying in the water. Our game plan was to start with a hiking adventure to Paradise Island, to the tip of the island where a lighthouse would offer great picture material. We figured that the clouds would have moved over by the time we got there and we turned out to be right. After getting through the small shops conveniently placed right behind the gate of the terminal, we turned left and walked along the street until we saw a sign leading us to Paradise Island, at the left by crossing a bridge over the water. Luckily we had our raincoats readily available in our backpack and wore it for most of the walk, as scattered showers kept on coming. After about 40 minutes we had officially entered Paradise Island and right at that time the rain had definitely stopped. It would turn out to be the last rain we had seen that day, so were very lucky.

We tried to make our way to the tip of the island, but unfortunately weren’t too successful. My husband thought he had seen a pathway at the left, but we were unable to find it. Somehow we ended up at the beach on the right side, offering great views of the magical blue water washing away the white sand and the famous hotel Atlantis rising up at the skyline. We walked further down the beach until we were blocked by rockfall. We couldn’t get further, so we decided to take the opportunity to make some first vacation shots with our newly purchased drone. Great first material, but still need some practicing…

After having our fun with the drone – completely undisturbed – we headed back along the beach, while the sun was already doing its best to make it a hot day. After having passed one of the hotel’s beaches, we went further until another tip of the island. There we continued to follow the shoreline at the right and ended up in Atlantis hotel. We were able to explore the premises, which are incredibly vast! There’s a lagoon in the middle of the complex, a shark river, stingray area, rope bridges, you name it. Paradise for tourists wanting to soak up some sun and fun, indeed!

It wasn’t too easy to find our way out of the hotel, but after we did we returned to the ship to get some lunch. Afterwards, we got back and walked around the town a little, following a map that my husband found on the web, which took us along some government buildings, a cathedral and a fort. Nothing spectacular. This took us about 2 hours, so we were back well in time before departure (4pm). Happy to have walked for a little more than 20 kilometers, all in all, we had squeezed out all we could of this Caribbean getaway.