My husband and I are heading to Grand Cayman next week and are debating whether we should rent a car. We are staying at the Westin, which I assume is in a central location, but will plan on eating dinners out and perhaps doing some snorkeling. How is parking and ease of getting around the island? We'd prefer not driving ourselves, but have heard taxis can get quite expensive. Please give us your input!!

Also would love some recommendations on best beaches for snorkeling and great dinner spots!

Definitely recommend renting a car to get around and explore, taxis are pricey, rental cars among the least expensive in the Caribbean, and lots and lots of great restaurants and places to explore.

Thanks so much! Is parking and getting around pretty easy? We're trying to avoid adding any stress to our vacation!
What are your 2 favorite restaraunts and best snorkeling spots?

Hi. For nice dinners I would recommend Calypso Grill and Reef Grill. A fun casual place is Coconut Joe's. If you like sushi try Bamboo in the Hyatt. For breakfast, Eats is good and is right across from the Westin.

As for snorkleing, Governor's Reef is close to the Westin...just head North on the beach. Also Smith's Cove in Georgetown.

The 7 Mile Beach from Georgetown to the Turtle Farm is bumper to bumper traffic. Be prepared. However, it will be necessary to rent a car to get around the island. You will want to go out to East End, and North End. You really can't get too lost. Even my Mom found her way around the island! We used to have a condo at Georgetown Villas on 7 Mile Beach but left 12 years ago for Nevis. Grand Caymen had become too Americanized to qualify as a Caribbean getaway for us. That included the traffic. Parking will be no more of a problem there than at a roadside strip mall at home. Snokelling will be o.k. all along 7 mile. Kristen's recommendation of Smiths Cove is good.

We spent a week at the Westin and never rented a car. We ate dinner at every place that was on our list by either walking, using the bus (the easiest system ever!)and used a taxi once. Far cheaper than renting a car. The water sports that we signed on for all came to get us at no additional cost. Eats Restaraunt is a great spot for more of a variety of food serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Lonestar was perfect for all-you-can-eat Fajitas on Tuesdays. Deckers offered all-you-can-eat lobster tails on Wednesdays. Eduardos is located in the Coconut Place shopping area just up the road toward Georgetown. They have salads that are magnificent. The one place that we did use a cab was to go to Grand Old House. The food was excellent and we enjoyed sitting out by the water.

Nevisian, please, please come back sometime soon and come see the Eastern end of the island, we are definitely not "Americanised", but still have (and hold onto proudly) our warm Caymanian hospitality, not to mention our own sense of relaxation and tranquility.

(Mind you, it does stress me out when I have to drive to Seven Mile Beach !)

You should have a car for 3 days or more. To get to some of the sights (Sting Ray City-great snorkeling very near there) and best snorkeling (that trip by taxi will cost $15++) each way and may have a wait on the return trip to the Westin and you have wheelss for dinner that day alone. I would pass on the turtle farm unless children under 12 are along.
But,if you will dive some of the better places and there are many dive shops will pick you up and may add $5/person if anythink for the RT tranfer. I suggest you go with a firm that has been around 8-10 yrs.+ and has 1 dive master for every 4 divers and a boat that takes 12-14 divers max. It is much more relaxing. Don't be influenced by the perks, fancy lunch, rum punch, etc.

We are just back from Cayman and did not rent a car but it was a short stay. I have in the past and it was quite easy to drive and park most places.

We had a lousy meal at the Reef Grill and would not recommend it. Casanova was a delight!

Eats across from the Westin was very good for breakfast and we would have gone back but could not get ourselves to leave the water.

We greatly enjoyed the snorkeling at Eden Roc and it was great without the cruise ship passengers in. Sat and Sun are good days for that as no ships were in though schedules could be altered due to weather conditions.

Have fun!

Great! I love all of the input, please continue to provide suggestions on snorkeling and dinner. We are quite excited about going to Grand Cayman as we have never been before!
I was debating the turtle farm and sounds like that might not be worth visiting.

Hi:

We had a great trip to Grand cayman, but we stayed up by Rum Point, so a car was a must. Our favorite meal was the Calypso Grill. We drove all over the island and snorkeled at various spots. Some on the North part of the island were a bit rough, but we really enjoyed snorkeling at Cemetery Reef (North of 7 mile beach) and even saw a shark! Another really cool thing we did was take a night kayak trip with Cayman Kayaks to a Bio Bay where the water is full of bioluminescent (glow in the dark when stimulated micro-organisms). This was one of the highlights of the trip. Enjoy!
Kristen

The restaurants that we enjoyed were Deckers,Pappagallo's,The Wharf and Chicken Chicken.

Good snorkeling spots are Smith's Cove,Eden Rock,Cemetary Reef (in West Bay)...my kids saw huge Barracuda at Rum Point.

I would definitely rent a car,it is much cheaper than taxing around.GC is pretty easy to navigate.We rented one at Thrifty rent-a-car at the airport.

Coconut Joe's (walking distance to the Westin) is a good spot for a hang out for drinks.

A trip to Stingray City with Captain Marvin's is a must!

Have a nice trip and explore the North/East end of the island for more of a laid back feel.

Christie

rent a car,I agree with the restaurants others have mentioned.we snorkeled at cheeseburger reef-wasn't my favorite but we saw alot of fish,eels,baby sand sharks that we didn't see anywhere else and that was great.few years ago we went swimming with the stingrays and also went snorkeling in that area.it was magnificent,i never would have believed how much fun it was until we were in the water with professionals and fed and held these huge gentle creatures!and it's very hard to get stung by the types of stingrays that we were with,so don't worry about that.lots of young kids were all over the stingrays,no problems at all.
we walked alot of places we went to ,also rented a scooter on one visit,it was fun.would only recommend turtle farm for very young children,kind of boring for adults, in my opinion.I would check out grand cayman website for basic info and get prices of taxi cabs and compare to rental cars-depending on what you want you may change your mind.keep in mind that so much is in a very short walking distance.we had no prob parking when we rented a car.you will love your vacation in this area-have fun!