Off to Barbados!

Ken and Virginia had visited to Puerto Rico in 2015, taken the Caribbean/Panama Canal cruise in 2017, and ventured to St. Lucia in 2019. Covid interrupted their habit of biennial visits to the Caribbean in 2021. In the fall of 2022 Ken deemed that he and Virginia needed to resume the practice. After consultations with their travel agent they settled on traveling to Barbados.

This lighthouse shown here was literally right outside Ken and Virginia’s room at the Barbados Hilton. You can also (more or less) see the Hilton’s beach. Ken is using this shot as the cover photo for this blog since it provides a good instant visual sense of the place.

 

It’s a Jaunt

Getting to the island involved connections in Dallas and Miami. The trip began at 6AM on Tuesday, March 7, 2023 when Ken + Virginia caught an Uber from home to the Wichita airport. The airline part of the trip started inauspiciously with a mechanical delay on departure from Wichita. Fortunately Ken + Virginia had a long layover at DFW, got some lunch, and still arrived at their departure gate long before the airplane for the next leg had arrived.

 

They Finally Made It

The plane from DFW to Miami was on time. After the roughly 3.5 hour flight Virginia + Ken arrived in Miami with time to grab a quick dinner before boarding the nearly 4 hour flight to Barbados. Once they were done with all the processes at the Barbados airport they got a taxi for the 35 minute ride to their hotel – the Hilton Barbados Resort at Needham’s Point. It is located right on the beach and just about 1.5 miles south of downtown Bridgetown (the capital). By the time they got settled in their room it was 12:45 AM AST (two hours ahead of Derby), so overall it was roughly a 19 hour trip!

 

Welcome to Room 213

Hours later on the morning of Wednesday, March 8, Ken got some basic shots of the room before V+K headed out for the day’s explorations.

 

Room 213 was a Balcony Room

It was located in what was known as the “Lighthouse Tower” due to its proximity to the Needham's Point Lighthouse shown previously in the first shot of this post (with a smaller version shown below). 

The Needham's Point Lighthouse is one of the four historic lighthouses in the country still in existence. (The other three are at South Point, Harrison Point, and Ragged Point.) Unlike the rest of those lighthouses, Needham's Point had a stationary, rather than rotating, beacon. Owing to its stationary nature, the lighthouse lens was half red and half green to allow sailors to know whether they were on the port or starboard side of Carlisle Bay and thus navigate safely around the peninsula. Built in 1855, this octagonal masonry tower – now painted white with a black lantern – is the island's second-oldest lighthouse. It is now inactive and partially restored by Hilton which owns the lighthouse itself and surrounding grounds. It stands 43 ft above sea level and flashed at 8-second intervals when in operation.

 

Cruise Ship Harbor

Stepping out into the hallway leading to their room provided K+V with this view of the of the Port of Bridgetown (main cruise ship harbor) that was about 2.5 miles away. (The hallway was enclosed and had VERY dirty windows that Ken did his best to mask in this image.)

 

Cruise Ship Harbor-Original

Just for comparison, here is how the shot looked before Ken fixed it up.