Barbados holiday, Post 2: Bridgetown

On Friday, our first full day in Barbados, we set out to explore the capital, Bridgetown.

Now might be a good time to talk about the bus system in Barbados. There are three types of buses: the large, government-owned blue buses (usually with a yellow stripe); the smaller, privately-owned yellow buses (usually with a blue stripe); and the privately-owned, white “ZR” vans (so called due to the first letters on their number plates). The fare on all of them is $1.50 Barbadian, and the Barbados dollar is pegged to the US dollar at $1 USD = $2 BBD. There wouldn't be too many countries where you can travel from one end to the other for the equivalent of 75 cents!!

The large blue buses don't give change if you don't have the exact fare, but the other two types do, as they usually have a conductor responsible for collecting fares and organising the seating (an important task when 22 people are to fit in a 14-seater van - that was our record!). The conductor spends half his time hanging out of the open door. The other point worth mentioning is that the small yellow buses and ZR vans generally have some kind of Bajan rap music blasting out of them at extreme volumes. Quite often we would be the only white people (i.e. tourists) on the bus - all the others don't know what they're missing out on in their air-conditioned taxis and rental cars!!

This is the inside and outside of the yellow bus we rode into Bridgetown on Friday...






The bus route finished a little way from the main part of the town, so we walked in along Baxter's Road and a busy pedestrian shopping street. You'll notice throughout this post that there is quite a contrast in the varying levels of maintenance and upkeep of homes and businesses!






The centre of Bridgetown contains the impressive Parliament buildings, and a narrow harbour with an esplanade on one side and a park and shops along the other side. Two bridges cross the harbour a couple hundred metres apart, and at the end of one there are a few market stalls catering to tourists (souvenirs, handmade leather sandals, etc). This is definitely the touristy part of Bridgetown.

Here are some photos from the esplanade side of the harbour. And yes, we indulged in some Mr Whippy to distract us from the heat for a few minutes!

And here are some photos from the other side of the harbour, where the shops and park are. Please excuse the abundance of photos of me, and lack of photos of Ben - he's the photographer these days so this tends to end up happening!!

Relaxing in the park (recovering from the heat of course - this will be a common theme!)...








Here's a statue of Barbados' first prime minister, Errol Barrow...






After a bit more wandering back on the north side of the harbour, we came to St Michael's Cathedral. The initial building was constructed in 1665, destroyed by a hurricane in 1780, and rebuilt a few years later. So there are some very old graves there - older than any you'll find in a formal cemetery in Australia! It was interesting to see the old spellings of the words on the graves and on plaques inside the building.












Our plan was to go to Oistins that night, so we started slowly making our way out to the main road where we could catch a bus heading in that direction. Here are some photos of the sights along the way. Re the second photo - we saw lots of guys with their mass of dreadlocks tucked up inside these stretchy knitted hats, and I thought they looked hilariously awesome!






















Another little fact about Barbados is that it is a fairly conservative culture with a strong Christian influence. We saw the below signs on Friday - the first one was on one of the bridges across the harbour, and the second one was outside a pottery business on the abovementioned long walk...






We spent Friday evening at the fish fry in Oistins, a seaside fishing village on the south coast. The Oistins fish fry is one of the most popular things to do on the island on Friday and Saturday nights, patronised by locals and tourists alike. There are dozens of little huts selling delicious cheap seafood, a few touristy market stalls, and a large stage with DJs and live music. It's next to the open air fresh fish market and backs right on to the beach.






I (unwittingly) ordered a very expensive shrimp skewer - we later found out that prawns are not caught locally. Ben had a huge meal (that I shared) of fried flying fish, macaroni pie, coleslaw and salad, and it only cost a dollar more than my four little prawns!!

Fried flying fish is a Barbadian specialty and so delicious that it saw us return to the fish fry two more times during the rest of our visit. I describe it as tasting like the best parts of KFC (i.e. delicious batter) without the worst parts of KFC (i.e. greasiness). Yummy!!














We thought the fish fry was fairly quiet compared to what we had been expecting, but this turned out to be because we had arrived right at the start (6pm) and only stayed for an hour. Apparently most people start showing up after 7pm, and 10pm is when it really gets pumping. We got a glimpse of the real thing the following Friday night!

So that was our first full day in Barbados - hot, colourful, interesting and delicious. It boded well for the forthcoming week!