4 Days in Nassau Recap (2022)

This is probably going to be one of my shortest recaps, ever.

Just like the budget breakdown I did for this post (found here) – it will be short. But unlike the budget, which was TOTALLY OFF, this will all be correct.

Promise.

I don’t know where I thought $300.00 USD spending money would be enough for a place that made Monaco and Zurich seem reasonable. I’m so serious. I knew The Bahamas were an expensive place, of course. I have friends that live there and know many people that have traveled there.

But…… frig.

I hadn’t been this surprised about the cost of things since I went to Miami earlier in the year. Except, this was even more expensive, and Miami wasn’t even worth it. At least Nassau was pretty damn nice.

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Friday, October 7th

It was mostly an uneventful flying experience to get to Nassau. I love that it is so close though! Remarkable that we can go from Toronto to this idyllic paradise in three hours. You can barely make it from Toronto to the other end of Toronto driving in rush hour traffic in three hours.

My parents and I flew with WestJet and everything went off without a hitch. The security line was oddly quick for us in Pearson Airport. The flight was on time and the staff was wonderful. Best part? Flying over The Bahamas. See here.

The water kept getting more beautiful. The views, unbeatable.

Unfortunately as we arrived it was also overcast in Nassau. This had me slightly worried, as I had TERRIBLE luck this year with the weather everywhere I went.

Guayaquil? No sun. Lima? No sun. Monaco? Raining.

Legit thought, ah shit my bad luck going to keep going even in The Bahamas.

The customs process entering Nassau went super duper fast and I was especially happy once I got my stamp because this was country #50 for me! Big Big Big deal. This entry to The Bahamas was a momentous occasion for me.

Once we exited the airport, we went to catch a cab to our hotel for the weekend – Sandyport Beach Resort.

We got very lucky, we made friends with our taxi driver immediately. Shout out to Roscoe, he ended up driving us around the whole weekend. He’s on time and a lovely man. If you go to Nassau, please see his business card below.

The ride from the airport to Sandyport was $35 USD, one-way. Ouch. The hotel is only an 11 minute drive from airport, but we all know how airport taxis go. So that didn’t really surprise me, it is the same in every country.

We arrived at our hotel about 1pm, but check in wasn’t until 3pm.

The woman at the front desk was so nice, she let us know that our room wasn’t ready yet but that they’ll take our bags and we can go enjoy the premises and go get some lunch if we wanted to. We were hungry, so that is where we made our way first.

First meal in The Bahamas – Blue Sail Restaurant.

It is located ON the Sandyport property, super accessible.

For our appetizer we got the conch fritters, because when in The Bahamas, you MUST have conch. Then for our mains my dad got veal (yea, idk who does that?), my mom got this shrimp salad and I got a pasta that had mussels, conch, calamari and shrimp in it.

Conch fritters were good, but my pasta? These tasted like the freshest mussels ever. Very good.

This was the moment where we learned, this fucking place is expensive.

Conch fritters, my pasta, my moms salad, my dads veal and two bottles of water came to like $140USD or some shit. What?

Do you know how bad our Canadian dollar is right now? That was a $200 meal somehow. My mom said at that point ‘later tonight, we are going grocery shopping.‘

I must sound like a cheap bitch.

I promise I usually do not care about spending on money or alcohol. But damn, when it is in USD, it just burns a bit more.

We walked back to the front desk and were told our room was ready now and made our way over. We had no idea how huge the space on the resort was. This place was massive. I thought it was some little, quaint or maybe boutique-ish spot. Nope. Big land mass.

We TOTALLY loved our room.

Huge room, the bathroom was massive with a shower AND tub in it, and best part? Balcony looking right over a secluded beach area. Can’t go wrong.

This place was also spotlessly clean. You could tell this was all new! Barely looked like this part of the resort had anyone staying there yet.

Once we unpacked and got settled in, my mom and I decided to make our way over to the nearby Super Value Quality Supermarket. This was only a 10-minute walk from our location.

On the way, we saw this other beautiful beach across the road and decided to take photos of it. Unfortunately, it seemed on this side of the island the heavy winds and maybe an earlier storm had brought on the yucky seaweed. But hey, that’s just a part of it sometimes. When I was in Cancun, I actually didn’t even get to go swimming at all because there was SO MUCH SEAWEED. So I was counting my blessings, because not all of the beaches were like this.

Let’s talk about this supermarket though. Now, I understand this was close to this Sandyport area which seems super touristy. Fine.

We go into this place and the cost of food? Literally, unbelievable.

I do not know how this island (I can’t speak for the others, because I haven’t visited those) can expect people to afford to feed themselves.

I don’t give a damn about me, I’m a tourist. If they’re going to gouge me, I get that. If I can afford to travel here, I can afford to eat here too.

However, one of my Twitter followers told me the minimum wage in The Bahamas is $5.25/hr ($210/40hrs, but I believe it’s changing to $260/40hrs, so it’ll be $6.50).

How the hell are the locals supposed to survive (even with this raise)? I understood the cost of things in Singapore, Switzerland and Monaco because the first two have a high minimum wage and the latter is a rich people playground. But this island? It was shocking.

My Bahamian followers let me know, this is the reality. Obviously, they know local spots on the island (butchers, bakers etc.) where they can get things for better prices, but overall this is some bullshit. In the grocery store, the prices I saw? Ridiculous.

I don’t know if my eyes were deceiving me, but I’m pretty damn sure I saw that it was $1.29 USD per apple. I realize they probably do not grow apples in The Bahamas and many things have to be imported, but still, what the fuck? Luckily the cost of their local beer and rum was cheap, so if I wanted to live off alcohol and not food this weekend, my wallet would have fared better.

My mom and I did our grocery shopping for snacks and sandwich stuff and made our way back to the hotel to turn in for the evening.

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Saturday, October 8th

Today we woke up determined to go visit a beach over on Paradise Island.

First, I made my way over to the front desk at our hotel to grab towels. During this walk, I took some more pictures of the Sandyport property that I wanted to share.

Like I said, massive space.

There was a tennis court, a pool, two beaches, a place to play bocce ball and a whole lagoon too. With all of this, I bet you’re probably wondering why the heck we would even leave the property to go elsewhere right?

Well, here was the problem.

The beach on one side of the resort had the seaweed on it, so we really couldn’t go swim there. The beach right in front of our balcony was beautiful, but shallow. I’m talking like, I wouldn’t even be able to walk super far to get it to my shoulders. I need deep water for swimming and this just wouldn’t do.

My dad opted to spend the day by our little, accessible beach and the pool, while my mom and I decided to call Roscoe and go over to Paradise Island.

I had asked my Bahamian Twitter followers which beach I should head to for the day and there was like 14 different answers so we said fuck it, let’s go to Cabbage Beach.

We packed up the snacks we bought the night before (because you damn well know we weren’t going to pay for food on Paradise Island) and made our way over.

The drive over was not that long, but it was cool to see other parts of Nassau and to cross the bridge over. Of course, in the distance you can see the massive Atlantis and also I think it was the Riu.

I checked the day pass options for those resorts, when I saw $170USD per person just to have access to a beach with no food or alcohol included, no thank you. I’m too broke for all that.

We arrived at Cabbage Beach and got some beach chairs and an umbrella ($60 USD total).

Beautiful beach. Crazy ass waves.

Listen. I am a fantastic swimmer. Plus, I am a large human.

I went into the water at Cabbage Beach only up to my thigh and that undercurrent took me out. Completely. I literally went legs over head, and ended up under water for 10 seconds.

Again, thank goodness I am a good swimmer and know not to panic. But goodness me.

The water at Cabbage beach was so tumultuous. We left a calm, peaceful beach that we didn’t have to pay anything for (but shallow) for a super duper crazy waves beach, that we had to pay for things at (but deep). I think maybe it was just a bad time of year to visit.

We spent the entire day at Cabbage Beach. The sun was also out ALL day! I loved that. The overcast skies didn’t appear and we were there from 10am until about 5pm.

Just was a little disappointing because yes, we could go in the water. But there was no relaxing in the water. You had to be on guard because my mom and I ended up getting hit by some more waves throughout the day. Also, I burned. But that is just my pale skin failing me over and over again.

We called Roscoe to come get us and take us back to Sandyport in the evening.

I think we picked a great time to go home because as we stepped foot into our room, a torrential downpour began. I mean it was raining SIDEWAYS. Huge rainstorm.

We thought we would maybe go back downtown this evening to try some conch salad, but the rain was not letting up. No point in going downtown if we can’t walk outside.

So we made some sandwiches and chose the next best thing, let’s go get drunk.

About 50 feet from where our room was located, was this gorgeous bar/cafe named Bon Vivants.

This place was such a vibe. If you come to Nassau, you should try to make a stop here.

We had a blast here.

If you’re into the whole aesthetic and extensive liquor menu place, this is for you.

My parents and I drank ….. a decent amount this evening and it was not a cheap bar.

It’s funny though, this experience totally felt like it was worth it. Yes the damn bill came to some crazy amount in USD, but we all would have happily done this again.

My dad had two grappa and an espresso, while my mom and I each had one of The Pain Killer ($24USD each, just for reference), one of the Iguana Punch (I believe) and then a shot of tequila each. The cocktail menu was amazing, you can see that here. Bring money, yes. But you’ll have a great time. The staff was also super nice!

Thank goodness we only had to walk a short back to our room. Sorry, stumble, short stumble back to our room.

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Sunday, October 9th

Final full-day here.

Todays plan was to do absolutely nothing.

We were fortunate that it was another gorgeous day outside.

I decided to park myself on the hammock right by our balcony and watch NFL RedZone the entire day.

This may have been one of the most perfect days of my life.

The Bahamas. Beach. Sun. Food. NFL RedZone. Hammock. Please, name me something better? You can’t.

No way there could be a Sunday spent better than this.

I wasn’t even exaggerating, we were out there from morning until 6pm, at least.

The resort didn’t have many guests currently (probably because high season is in winter), so we had this beach to ourselves all day. So what if it was shallow? At least I could go in it and not possibly drown, plus I had access to my own bathroom and free chairs/hammock. Loved that for me.

Just wanted to show you the shots later in the evening I caught on the beach. So relaxing, what I needed.

Once the Cowboys won their game against the Rams (GO COWBOYS), we decided to go get a nice dinner on our final evening in Nassau.

Tonight we were heading to The Poop Deck, Sandyport. What a name right?

Before I even get into the food, lots of praise to Aviana, our server. She gave the best customer service we had all weekend. She was so damn good at her job. If you go to this restaurant, I hope you have her as your server and you tip her lots. Even if the food wasn’t as good as it was, I’d probably come back here just to drink and see her again. Yes, that good.

So for this evening we ordered a small serving of the conch chowder to start, our main was a MASSIVE snapper with mashed potatoes, rice and mac pie on the side. Also, we finally tried the Bahama Mama drink. Sweeeeet.

The conch chowder was so good, I wish I had gotten the larger serving of it. However, it is probably better I didn’t because the snapper my mom and I got to split, we were barely able to finish. That is how big this fish was. Grilled and deboned + the sides were tasty. We loved the food here.

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Monday, October 10th

Today we were leaving Nassau.

Damn shame having to return to cold Canada, when this heavenly place exists three hours away.

We left Sandyport and Roscoe drove us to the airport. I promised him I’d tell everyone to use his services because he was so great, so remember to do so if you go there!

At the airport we had a bit of a nuisance happen.

I am someone who travels with just a carry-on, I check in 24-hrs before and I even printed our boarding passes at the hotel. I do all of this to avoid lines and less people to talk to. Well, at this airport, that didn’t matter. We went to go to security and the lady there said our printed boarding passes wouldn’t suffice to enter, we HAD to go get the one from our airline’s kiosk.

This was a first for me. I get some places won’t scan or deal with mobile boarding passes, but we had even printed ours! No. Not good enough.

We ended up having to go wait 20 minutes in the West Jet line (because of course, everyone else in line had bags to check etc), just to print…. a boarding pass again. Not a fan.

Thankfully, my mind was on something else at the airport, something I had been looking forward to.

It was KFC IN THE CARIBBEAN TIME!!!!

Before you start judging me for having an American food chain outside of America, I know you haven’t tried the KFC in the Caribbean if you judge. It is a totally different (BETTER) food.

We got the spicy chicken and the BBQ wings.

The BBQ wasn’t as good as the Jamaica one (although, still very good and 100x better than this nonsense in Canada/USA), but the spicy chicken? SLAPPED. It was delicious. My mom has eaten KFC twice in the almost 30 years we have been in North America and when she tried the KFC in Nassau….. even she said it was really good. Therefore, if you don’t believe me, you have to believe her.

Our plane ride home ended up being on time and everything was great with that too. I caught some more amazing shots flying out of The Bahamas.

Unfortunately, we still had to land in Pearson, on a long-weekend Monday. Absolute shit show.

We landed at about 4pm.

It took 30 minutes to get off the plane because we were disembarking 50 people at a time only due to security being too busy. Once we got off the plane, I had to split from my parents and go use the Nexus line because no way I was waiting in the crazy security line at the time.

Just for you to understand how bad the security line was for non-Nexus people.

My parents and I entered the customs area at the same time.

I went through Nexus, customs, caught the train to terminal 1 and caught the UP Express home and AS I EXITED the UP Express at Union Station – that is when my parents had finally gotten through security/customs. That is how long that process took them. Abomination. I hate landing at Pearson.

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I hope I didn’t offend or wasn’t too inflammatory on my comments about the cost of things in Nassau. Because really, who the hell gives a damn if a tourist thinks something is pricey, you know?

You want to have fun, you’re gonna pay. Trust me, I get it. And to be honest, even the cost didn’t totally dissuade me from wanting to visit again. Next time, maybe the Exumas. I think I need to see that for myself since my beach experience wasn’t exactly the best during this trip.

But, aside from the price, the island is beautiful, the people are really nice and the food was good too.

I would come back to visit another one of their islands on a long weekend again, when I save up enough money to do so or go on a diet. Maybe if I didn’t need to eat so many times a day, this would be cheaper for me.

• Mirna