Port 28 Bridgetown, Barbados

by Ed · March 7, 2022

Early on Mar 4th, 2022, we came into port in Bridgetown, Barbados. As we turned into the harbor we saw a breakwater and two huge, yellow container cranes on our port side.

Then the Royal Caribbean Explorer of the Sea slid into view on our starboard side. We sailed on her for Christmas 2000, then one day later jumped on her sister, Adventurer of the Seas for New Years to celebrate the start of the 21st century. We also had the Regent Seven Seas Mariner sharing the harbor with us. Outside the harbor is a ship we were surprised to learn is the Cunard Queen Victoria! Later the Star Clipper arrived – I love tall masts!

And Windstar’s original ship, Wind Star, arrived, up close to the Barbados welcome sign. We honeymooned on her sister ship, Wind Spirit!

We did not book an excursion for this port – Weve been here before. But we have goals! Our first goal is to find a pet store to buy gifts for a crew person who is leaving us soon. He has two dogs. The second goal is to see what is at the Garrison. We stumble on this sign on our way in to town. I knew the Garrison is a UNESCO World Heritage site, but by this is appears most of the city of Bridgetown falls under that category!

The UNESCO World Heritage portion of Bridgetown has a lot of interesting and varied buildings. I’m gonna show you some examples that caught my eye.

This one clearly has a story, but I’m not sure it’s a good one.

This is an insurance company. Who would have guessed?

This is Swan Street, a pedestrian avenue filled with pop-up stalls in front of stores.

Can you guess what building this is on? Yup! The bus station!

St Patrick’s is a benchmark for directions. “You know St Patrick’s? Just go two blocks north of that and the store is on the left.”

More interesting buidlings.

Beautiful Carlisle Bay and the beach is bustling with folks we believe are largely from the Queen Victoria, since this is where the tenders have been coming.

Just to the left of the image above, Queen Victoria can be seen at anchor.

Carlisle Bay has this great park area with lots of shade. And a little gazebo in the distance…

…that is really nice!

We found our pet store and bought a couple of toys, then went in search of the Garrison. We knew we were close when we found this sign. But is this wall all that is left? The building on the sign is important!

We pass a little restaurant that has the same name as one of our favorite restaurants in the Cape Canaveral area.

And then we find the active St Ann’s Fort where the Barbados Defense Force resides.

Fort walls with cannon are on display inside the fence St Ann’s Fort compound.

We have to get sneaky to a picture of the watchtower through the chain link fence.

And then we hit gold! Here is the Garrison Headquarters building! Remember the sign I mentioned earlier? Beautiful!

Cannon line the grass on the perimeter of the Garrison Savannah horse track! Apparently they’ve been running the ponies here sine 1845!

It’s a gorgeous track with an inner dirt track and outer turf track layout. The winner’s circle carries the Barbados trident flag.

The big surprise was to learn George Washington had a home down here! If we ever learned of this in any of the history books it was long lost knowledge to me.

This is the end of day 1 and so I include this lovely sky shot from our new berth in the harbor. We took the Regent’s spot and the Regent took the Explorer’s spot. Too messy to explain. But now it’s easier for us to walk to the cruise terminal than before.

And I found this lovely sliver of moon hiding in the pale sky.

On day 2 we went back in to town on another shopping mission. We were looking for a lozenge called “Fisherman’s Friend” in any fruit flavor for one of our crew who swear by them for motion sickness. Since we’ve been having several rougher than normal nights, he’s been using up his supply helping out his crewmates. So we wanted to help refill his supply.

We missed this little guy yesterday. We were on the wrong side of the street trying to figure out how to get out of the port.

More interesting buildings. the stone structure on the left is the street side of the stone buidling shown earlier.

This is the St Mary’s Episcopalian Church. It was interesting to find the cemetary between the road and the church.

This storefront design seems to hail from the French occupation time.

This store got clever in decorating its alleyway! I think it would have been more effective to carry the red around the corner, but it’s likely the red post dates the painted side.

The Parliament Buidlings are crowning jewels in the middle of Bridgetown. One has the clocktower, and the other now holds a museum.

Just in front of Parliament is the National Heroes’ Square, hosting a monument dedicated to those who died fighting in World War I (1914-1918) and on the other side, in World War II (1939-1945).

Of course, why would a city be named Bridgetown if it didn’t have bridges? This is the most picturesque of them all, the Chamberlain Bridge.

The river entry gives this part of town a Venice feel.

Of course, there are more interesting buildings here.

Having completed our “mission” we head back to the ship. Instead of riding the shuttle from the terminal to the ship, I elected to walk and had the opportunity to snap a few shots of this structure. The policeman on the bicycle in this photo asked me if I knew what I was photographing? I replied this obviously loaded something like grain onto the ship. He said I’m correct, but it is sugar cane. And these conveyors are still in use!