Barbados - How long is too long?
 

My fiancee and I are planning our honeymoon to Barbados - we will be staying at The Crane Resort - we love the rooms, the size of the property, and also the fact that it's out of the way from town.

We're not partiers, we're not rich, so my question is how long do you think is TOO long (where people without unlimited funds and who don't want to spend 8 10-hour days straight days on the beach)

Likewise, how long would be not enough time to see the sights of Barbados?

The reason I ask is that our trip length may be impacted by flight availability and may force us to choose something other than our ideal time of 8 nights.

Thanks!

The biggest factor for most people is that eating out in Barbados is expensive.

There are lots of activities such as dinner shows, renting a car/hiring a driver to take you on an island tour, catamaran cruises, the rum tour, snorkeling with the turtles, etc. We did a week the first time we were there and felt like we got to see/do all the things that we REALLY wanted to. We widened our playground a little more this February when we were there for a couple of days before heading out to Palm island.

You will have the best time in Barbados. We loved it!

I can answer as we stayed at The Crane last year and we are very mellow vacationers and not partiers or drinkers. The Crane seems to be running a package that includes dinner so you may want to look into that.

For your question, if you can only get flights for 5 nights, I think that would be enough. 10 nights would absolutely be too many, unless you are going to change locations to another part of the island.

We had 4 nights and do not at all feel we missed out on anything we wanted to do or see.

There are some ardent fans of Barbados on this forum that will tell you otherwise.

There is a huge modern supermarket less than 4 minutes' drive from The Crane and you should just buy groceries and eat meals in your gorgeous villa. It has a totally modern kitchen and all the amenities you would need for that and groceries were not overly expensive.

As far as sightseeing, we felt we really saw all we had planned to see in Barbados in two different "driving days" as suggested by someone totally helpful on this forum: one day we started from the Crane and saw the East Side sights and were back for sundown and had vveerrryyy leisurely lunch on a hill and some hours at a shady beach.

On our arrival day we went into Bridgetown and saw the historic sights we wanted to, in about an hour. On our departure day, we meandered to the airport from the West Coast. It was fine.

We actually spent our "beach days" in St. Lucia and still found time to relax at the pool and beach in Barbados, so if the best you can find is 4 nights, even that is fine. I think 8 nights is long for any one destination, but that is personal preference.

Happy Honeymoon!

Your 8 days sounds about right. If you rent a car and want to do a decent job of sightseeing on this richly varied island, you'll need 3 days for that. That will give you decent tome for hanging out at the beach.

Thanks a lot for all the insight - we've gone with the 9 night option for now on flights - it's a late PM arrival and an early AM departure, so one of those 8 days/9 nights things.

How much should we expect to pay for a car rental, including all required insurance etc? I've been seeing about 50 USD/day...

As a follow up, our 9 nights ended up being about right...7 would have been sufficient, 5 too few, 12 too many.

Rental car for one week for a Mini Moke (WAY more fun than a standard compact car) was $300 through Drive-a-matic including Collision Damage Waiver.

Thanks for taking the time to write a followup! You were brave to rent a MM. Glad you had a good time.

Peace, Greenie