An Extensive Travel Guide For The Bahamas: Sites, Food, & Spa

Isn’t it amazing how much you are learning from my experience to The Bahamas? Sure makes me want to drop everything and go back [except for the sun poisoning – See this post for that… Pearl Island] The good thing about this trip is we didn’t  just sit by the beach and get tan [or burnt]. I know what you’re saying… ‘What’s so bad about that?’ Nothing is bad however, it is nice to get out and explore the area! Exactly, what we did – we explored several different sites, ate some unique foods, and enjoyed some spa time that I’m about to tell you all about! Are you ready?

Lucky for you, that you get to read about these details from a real person before you go do them. I suppose I didn’t think about doing research on them before going because our trip was built so quickly that there was just no time. Hopefully, you’ve planned a bit more in advanced and are able to implement these tips into your trip! If not, alls good you will still have a fabulous time!

Let’s just jump right into it today…

First up: Various Sites We Explored

The Queens Staircase

A brief background about my interests… I secretly and not-so-secretly am obsessed with historical landmarks and ruins. There is no stopping me when I find out that there is a building that is old, ornate with a deep historical purpose; I will be going to it. This could be a cave, a church, museums, France and Italy all together… I am obsessed. To be frank, I’m not quite sure where this interest came from but it now lives with me forever.

That being said, when I saw that there was something called ‘The Queens Staircase’ I knew for sure that we had to see it. There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Here’s, the thing though – my sunburn was killer this day. I felt terrible and this day required a ton of walking. We chose to walk because we didn’t want to pay for the taxi to drive us around downtown when it was just as easy (and cheaper) to just walk.

From what I can remember, the Queens Staircase was named in honor of Queen Victoria and carved out of the limestone hillside by slaves to provide a direct route from Fort Fincastle to Nassau City.

It is a short venture but I highly suggest making the trip up the 65 steps! PS: Wear your walking Shoes 😉

Fort Fincastle

Okay, there is a Fort! Yes! Did you freak out about it like I did? Probably not because there are not that many people as obsessed like me when they hear there are Forts nearby. No shame. So, I first heard about the Queens Staircase then Fort Fincastle which should have been the other way around but luckily, we put both on the list because well, they are right next to each other. SCORE!

The Fort was a lot smaller then I was expecting but small or not – I wanted to see it.

There is a cost however, it is under $5 per person because there is a small tour for the Fort where a guide tells you details about Nassau and what surrounds the Fort.

Around the Fort there is also a few merchandise carts and a building to buy water which was nice because we got super dehydrated by the time we made it up to the top of the Queens Staircase. There is also a bathroom at the top of the stairs which was so awesome #doublescore.

I’ll never say that sites like these are not worth going to so: my suggestion is that you should make time in your trip to go because it’s really neat to see the physical history of new places in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

Rum Cake Factory

Location: 602 E Bay Street, Nassau N-4122, New Providence Island

Unfortunately, I was not able to get any images for this adventure because I was not feeling very good at this time of our vacation. The sun poisoning was really getting to me and I really needed to find a bathroom. Note: There are very slim places to go to the bathroom around this location. We ended up going to a pretty sketchy place bought a drink and used their bathroom. The light in the one stall bathroom didn’t work and there was only one really small window. It was really dirty and I wouldn’t recommend but when you gotta go… you gotta go.

Meanwhile, my parents were at the Rum Cake Shop. Here’s what we found:

• It is extremely small and everyone likes to visit there so it gets crowded extremely fast
• They have a ton of different flavors of rum cake
• You can find different places who make rum cake but this location is the true creator of it and they make it in house right next door!
• You won’t need but 15 minutes for this stop

Bus’ing Around Downtown

Full disclosure – I hate buses. My husband rides on a bus every morning for work and so he doesn’t mind it at all. That being said, he was super excited about the idea of riding in an authentic bus in the Bahamas. It truly is sweet how he enjoys the little things. 🙂 Anyways, the bus we rode was extremely, extremely, inexpensive however, you get what you pay for in my opinion. This bus crammed as many people onto it as humanly possible. The weird thing was that there were seats everywhere. You could not get out unless someone in front of you moved out of their seat because there were no aisles.

I happened to end up with an ‘aisle seat’ which means if someone behind me needed to get off – I had to get up, lift my seat up and move out of the way. It was very strange and ended up tearing my dress in the process because it got caught in the seat. Needless to say, we weren’t thrilled with the experience but I do recommend you try it once.

The other note about it was that there were no bells to ring – the driver stops at the stop and you either know you need to get off or he is driving to the next one. You really need to pay attention on these bus rides!!

Next Up: Memorable Food During Our Bahamas Trip 

(I apologize for not providing enough photos for this section)

The Poopdeck

I know exactly what you’re thinking and to this day I am still thinking this same thought. Why would any one name their restaurant Poopdeck I know I know. It is weird. However, doesn’t it make you curious as to what it is? Luckily, this was the kind of authenticity that I wanted.  So let me set you up:

We had a reservation for all the restaurants that we ate at for dinner. For the day of our Poopdeck reservation, we were shopping downtown Nassau. Prior to Dinner, we were exploring the city by foot and thought that it would be fine just to walk to the restaurant since taxis were just too expensive to do for little trips. So, we stopped into some stores and asked how far the restaurant was from our current location and each person proceeded to say that it ‘wasn’t too much further’ so we kept walking…

After walking 40 minutes we finally found the Poopdeck. After looking at the map – we noticed that their were two different Poopdecks in the city and we realized we went to the wrong one. Nevertheless – we were eating there because we walked there. So no going back.

What I Enjoyed Here: The atmosphere was spectacular. You get that sitting by the water sipping on your cocktail looking at the breathtaking pier moment. It was everything. That cocktail was absolutely amazing too.

What I Didn’t Love: I did end up getting a bug in my food. Normally, I’m one to freak out and not eat anything after that but – we are eating outside so it’s understandable. They took care of it and made me a new dish. No problem.

Here’s the visual:

 

 

 

 

 

The Hotel Restaurants 

So, these won’t be good tips if you don’t stay at this particular hotel but if you plan on staying at Hyatt Baha Mar then here are is some good information for you.

In my first post I briefly say that we didn’t have a great selection of food and that I was going to elaborate on this later. Here is later.

When it comes to food, I am not the easiest person to please because I can be named a ‘picky eater’. Though I am working on this – it does not mean that I can change overnight. When we decided on this hotel we looked online and saw that were were several options to choose from on their list of restaurants. All ranging from mexican to french to Italian and to seafood. We really had a wide range of choices. Most of them we booked reservations for.

Not surprisingly, some of our plans changed based in various reasons and we had to change our dinner plans.  Here is a breakdown:

El Jefe – Mexican

This was one we didn’t schedule a reservation for. We saw it on the hotel map and went to find it however, it was no where to be found. We asked three staff members and the last person actually knew what we were talking about. The other two did not even know about the restaurant. We still tried to locate it – no luck until the end of the trip when we found out it was a food cart. Needless to say, we did not eat there.

3 Tides – Seafood

We ended up eating here three times. Honestly, it wasn’t too bad. I ended up sharing the ribeye with my dad which was probably a bad idea because it was a seafood place. However, we ate their twice for breakfast and that was really fresh & delicious!

Tip: Make a reservation & eat the seafood

 

Cafe Madeleine – French Bakery

If you know me at all you will know that I flipped when I found out that their was a french bakery at this hotel. It was like Bahamas was speaking to me. I hope you can already tell that this was my favorite food location. We went their several times during our stay at Baha Mar. We had pastries, gelato, and of course coffee. Service was okay… it was a cafe so they didn’t need to be that personable. Definitely, stop by here if you are able!

The Swimming Pig

This was by far my favorite dinner restaurant. We ate here our first night and once again in the middle of our vacation. The service as you come in was really terrible for us. We walked in and the two hosts both times would just stare at you but didn’t say hi until we said ‘we’d like to eat here’. It was really awkward and made us very uncomfortable. Luckily, the service at our table was very good. You just have to get past the hosts.

For me, it was an upscale bar & grill restaurant; A definite must eat.

Tip: Make a reservation & don’t be scared off by the hosts because the food is really good.

 

 

 

Regatta Buffet

Okay, this one is a tough call. We planned on eating at this restaurant one of the nights and there was literally a giant line waiting outside to go into the restaurant [for a buffet I might add]. A lot of the restaurants didn’t have early enough hours except this one so that explained why there were so many people waiting outside for this place to open. We decided that we would try this restaurant a different night.

We finally were able to give it a try and honestly, I don’t think it was worth it. It cost $54 per person. It definitely had a lot of great options but for some reason I would have rather spent the money on an actual meal rather than bits and pieces of different things. The lobster was amazing though.

Tip: Don’t go here unless you are okay with spending a lot of money on random bits of food. You also still have to tip your waitress.

Fi ‘Lia – Italian

We weren’t going to go to this one even though we made a reservation because we weren’t really that hungry. But because there weren’t that many options around the hotel we didn’t really have a choice. So, it was either eat at the same restaurant for a 3rd or 4th time or try somewhere new. This restaurant is also very expensive.

The service is pretty rough. They were not the friendliest waitstaff. I also felt that their menu was really small. If you have ever eaten somewhere where you eat ‘shareables’ this was one of those types of restaurants. So, you couldn’t get a ceasar salad unless you wanted to pay $25 and share it with the table because it was formally made at your table by one of their chefs. Personally, I just wanted a side ceaser salad but I guess you can’t do that. So I ended up getting something alongside buttered noodles; wasn’t very good. My husband ended up getting a squid ink pasta dish which was really cool – and tasty, he says!!

Tip: Make a reservation

 

 

Lastly, we had several cocktails throughout our stay at the poolside restaurants but they weren’t that good and weren’t worth even photographing; super disappointing.

Finally: Our Spa Appointment

Going to the spa was one of my most important things I wanted to make sure that we did on our trip to the Bahamas. Prior to our trip, I was going through a great deal of stress in my every day life so I really needed a moment to relax and get my stress out. However, get pumped for this story.

I wanted to make sure our appointment was early in our vacation that way if I got burnt I wouldn’t need to cancel the appointment because it would hurt too much. Which if you read my Pearl Island post… you’ll know that it was a good thing we did that.

Read This Post on Pearl Island

The spa space was absolutely breathtaking and really put you in the mood. It felt amazing to walk into the building. Very friendly and very welcoming. When we got taken back to ‘get ready’ we were put in a room where we waited and filled out the paperwork. The one woman who was already in the room, my mom, and the woman who came in after us all got taken back to their room before me. So, I was left sitting there waiting. That felt lonely but I moved on.

I got taken back to my room. My mom ordered us a facial & a deep muscle massage. My mom gets spa treatments done quite often so she knew pretty much how it was going to go. I on the other hand, was a little bit nervous. I’ve gotten a massage done before but I guess I hadn’t gotten a facial done because I’m pretty sure I needed to get another massage done after that session because I was so stressed out. I also was told not to go into the sun after my session because of the lotions and the time of session I had because it would harm my skin which is hard when, you know, you’re in the Bahamas…

Unfortunately, I didn’t love my sessions because my massage guide didn’t really guide me through the process of what she was doing. Perhaps they aren’t supposed to? I just felt nervous and freaked out the entire time and I’m thinking I came out more stressed than I went in. However, I don’t feel that the spa salon did anything wrong – I just didn’t understand what they were doing and when. I suppose I need to get more facials and spa treatments done more often to get used to it! 😉

 

 

 

 

Overall Experience

• No regrets with the historical sites and I definitely recommend you go see them. Especially the rum cake because they make great gifts to bring back to the US!
• The food was not as authentic as I was expecting. The unfortunate thing was that 90% of the food we ate was at our hotel which wasn’t too stellar. I imagine that if we had been willing to explore restaurants outside of our hotel we would have found food that was a bit more interesting and memorable.
• The spa was definitely a great time – I just wish they walked me through the steps they were doing so I was a little be prepared but overall – I enjoyed myself.

We were able to see so many different unique things and we got a chance to eat some different foods, I suppose a tip for you is to step out and try more! If you get a chance to go on your trip and you tried something that isn’t listed here and loved it… please comment below so we can continue to spread the word about new adventures!

Thank you for reading this extra long post today; I greatly appreciate it!

Until next time,

Our 2018 Highlight Video – Nassau, Bahamas