Bahamas is one place where there isn’t a whole lot to plan. Pack your beach clothes and off you go. There are 700+ islands in Bahamas, but we decided to stick to the known Nassau.

Booking flights

Flights to Bahamas are usually expensive no matter where you are flying from, so we booked our trip with miles. Etihad had good redemption options with Jet Blue but there would be bunch of other options too.

Choosing a resort

Being a tourist spot, most hotels have promotional rates for various associations you might have. Check Costco, AAA, IATA or any other associations as the differences with different rate codes were huge.

Immigration

Bahamas has on-arrival visas for Indians which makes it very convenient to visit. They also have friendliest immigration officers with live music as you wait for your turn at immigration. Nassau airport also has US preclearance, so you arrive in US as if you took a domestic flight. Everything about Bahamas is to make your vacation perfect.

Nassau

Bahamas looks wonderful from the airplane, on the ground and under the water with an underground park and statues. No matter where you see from, Bahamas is beautiful.

The British Colonial

We visited in March 2019 and stayed at the British Colonial Hilton Nassau for four nights. One big highlight was the private beach at the resort.

Free kayak rentals at the private beach.

With water so green, we could sit by the beach all day doing nothing and still have a great time.

Food and drinks

Great tropical cocktails no matter where we went. One of the best Shrimp Ceviche I’ve ever had was at Senor Frogs [if this picture looks familiar, it is because this restaurant is from James Bond’s movie with the “shaken not stirred martinis” scene. The restaurant has lots of posters from James Bond making it kind of touristy, but the food and drinks here are to die for].

Scuba

I’ve had better scuba experiences in Australia (Great Barrier Reef) and Hawai (Maui) than in Bahamas, but we didn’t want to spend the entire vacation at the resort so we did half a day of scuba diving. Not a whole lot of corals or sea life at our diving spot, but the water was clear.

The one thing that stood out on our scuba was the “Ocean Atlas”, an underwater sculpture by Jason deCaires Taylor that stands 5m off the seafloor and weighs more than 60 tons.

In all, Bahamas is expensive, but definitely one of the nicest beaches we’ve ever seen along with great food and drinks.