Thursday March 13th, 2025 Nassau, Bahamas
- Neil Wylie
- Dec 7, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 19
It’s been 24 years since we last visited Nassau; back in the days when our vacations didn’t involve a ship, we spent 2 weeks in the Bahamas and enjoyed it immensely. So it was with some excitement that we made our way ashore today to see if we could relive a bit of our past.
This morning we noticed 5 other immense cruise ships docked in port, ours was the smallest – I’d heard that upwards of 30,000 cruisers would be exploring Nassau today. Walking from the ship into town it was barely recognizable, I could see several older landmarks, but it was like some gigantic tourist disease had taken over the town. Bars, shops, tour operators and many modern buildings almost completely obliterating the quaint historic place that we remembered. And people, thousands of people – in many places, literally no elbow room.
The famous Straw Market located right on the dockside was our first stop, it’s a covered building housing many market stalls that at one time sold mostly straw woven products made by locals – today the stalls are still operated by locals, but the product range has broadened to include the full array of tourist trinkets, mostly made outside the Bahamas. Wandering through the market I wondered how these stalls made any money; they all basically sell the same stuff and even with a huge number of visitors in the port the market was not busy. In one end and out the other, brought us to the Bay Street, the main street in town – crammed full of tourist shops and aggressive sellers standing outside trying to drag you inside; even the “security” guards were pulling double duty, it was awful – like having my fingernails pulled out one by one, very slowly.
Parliament square was mostly as we remembered it and things began to look up a bit as we wandered by the courthouse, senate and assembly house – all beautiful pink and white neoclassical buildings dating from around 1813. We remembered the statue of Queen Victoria flanked by two canons in the center of the square. The senate meeting room was located upstairs in the central building and amazingly it was open to the public; we just walked right in and upstairs into the room where, only the night before, the senate of 16 people had met - meeting papers were still strewn across the table.
At the opposite end of Bay Street we found the British Colonial Hotel to be dramatically updated from the time of our last visit, admittedly it was a bit run down and in need of attention. The Bond film crew had partied in this hotel during the filming of Thunderball in 1965 and this is what had attracted us to the place on our last visit; we had high tea in one of the function rooms we recognize from a documentary film about the making of Thunderball. Today we found the hotel to be a lavish destination resort with a magnificent lobby and grand staircase, many swanky restaurants and a private beach with over water bar.
Walking through the hotel, past the pools and down to the beach a gentle breeze from the sea swirled around the palm trees creating a really spectacular scene. Several large hotels had been constructed along the coast adjacent the British Colonial and we found a nice, elevated walkway leading from the private beach area past the other hotels, a small marina with no boats and around to a public beach that was absolutely crammed with avid sunseekers. The sea in the Bahamas is very special, crystal clear with a beautiful blue, azure tint.
Fighting our way back through the crowds on the dock we returned to the ship hoping that the plans to expand the port capacity even further would meet with some gigantic bureaucratic obstacle.
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