Barbados holiday, Post 11: Bridgetown again

We spent Friday, our last full day in Barbados, wandering around Bridgetown again. We did some shopping, browsed through an almost-deserted craft centre, came across random roadside markets, saw one of the oldest synagogues in the western hemisphere, and found the post office so we could mail postcards to our parents.

Here are some of the sights from Friday...

This is a neighbourhood pub, called a "rum shop". I read that there are about 1600 of them in Barbados. With a population of around 290000, that's one rum shop for every 180 Barbadians! And considering that that population figure includes women and children, and rum shops are mostly frequented by men... it must take a lot of pints per patron to keep them all in business!

This is the bus depot from which we caught the bus to Harrison's Cave two days earlier (in the pouring rain)...

Handmade leather sandals...




School kids...












Here are some photos from the Nidhe Israel Synagogue (the pink building below). It was built in 1654, destroyed by a hurricane in 1831, rebuilt, and then fell into disrepair until it was sold in 1929. About 300 Brazilian Jews, persecuted by the Portuguese, settled in Barbados in the 1660s - it was they who introduced the sugarcane crop and helped Barbados go on to become one of the world's major sugar producers.


















That evening we were picked up from our guesthouse by David and Raquela (mentioned in Sunday and Wednesday's blog entries), and we went to the Oistins fish fry together. Our third time in a week! This time I tried dolphin, which June had recommended - but don't worry, it's not what we call dolphin, i.e. porpoise! Dolphin in Barbados is actually mahi mahi. And Ben tried marlin, which David recommended. Here we are enjoying our grilled fish on the beach...








Our next stop was for dessert - a fantastic ice-cream parlour called Creamy Moo's at the south coast's Quayside Centre. The line-up was so long it took about half an hour to even get through the door and into the air-con! But the ice-cream concoctions were AMAZING...

This is not an optical illusion - my ice cream really was about three times the size of everyone else's. But I finished it!

Afterwards we went for a quick visit to David and Raquela's house. And then they dropped us home so we could get about 4 hours of sleep before our flight in the morning! It had been a thoroughly enjoyable evening with them, filled with lots of discoveries of things we have in common. We definitely hope to cross paths with them again!

The next morning we flew out of Barbados at 7am. The most eventful parts of the trip home were: my being randomly flagged by American Airlines for extra security screening (resulting in thorough bag searches and pat downs at TWO airports), and getting stuck in line at Miami customs behind a group of Cubans who couldn't speak any English. But they were eventually allowed into America, and so were we. After 24 hours of travelling - which included four airports, three flights, two taxi rides, and one 2.5 hour drive in our own car - we arrived home half an hour into Sunday morning, May 30th.

And that was our fantastic holiday in Barbados! :D