Antigua - the Hotel

Arriving at night , I got a taxi from the airport to my hotel - the Royal Antiguan. Met up with my friends at the hotel who had been there for a week already and proceeded to have a few cocktails - the first of many. This was my first experience of an "all inclusive" resort, so it was nice to know that, within reason, I could have any drink I liked without wondering what the bill would be!

This photograph was taken next day looking back from the top of the nearby ruined fort on a hill. The Royal Antiguan is the multi-storey building in the photograph.

This photo shows the fort hill (the one on the left) and was taken from one of our hotel rooms. We had "bay view" rooms - the mid tear ones. So-called "garden view" rooms tended to look out at the side of a hill about 20 meters away!

This is a zoom lens view of the fort on the hill. I tried to do a 360 degree panorama from the top, but it didn't work out very well as I did not have a proper tripod to ensure the photos lined up.

It was quite a nice walk up to the fort - not terribly far, but at least it stretched the legs a little after all that eating and drinking in the hotel.

Walking up to the fort one day we came across some of the local goats that run semi-wild around the place. These lot were obviously a little thirsty!

The Royal Antiguan hotel may not be the most luxurious hotel on Antigua, but it has a great location. The gardens are quite extensive and have all the usual amenities - pool, pool bar ...

The beach was a short walk through the gardens.

The beach itself was really nice - fairly gently shelving and quite sheltered. The blue roofed building in this photo was one of the hotel restaurants - typically our chosen location for lunch.

Our All-inclusive deal included some water sports - canoes, sailing boats and sailboards. Never really got a chance to try the sailing boats out much as the days we were there were sufficiently windy that they would not let novices like us out alone on the boats. However the canoes were quite useful for paddling around looking at fish life etc.

The bay was quite sheltered and often had yachts anchored. The building on the clift-top is probably part of the hotel in the next bay - though in retrospect I'm not sure if it was or was just a very plush villa.

Each day, a number of trips were available - including a sort of "booze cruise" on a "pirate ship". Each morning it would call, the small tender would pick up the punters, and then return them in the late afternoon, suitably oiled up from the "inclusive drinks" they had in the cost of the trip. That option did not really attract us much so they did not get our custom.

One option we did try - and I fell in love with - was Jet Skiing. This is me about to try it out for the first time. Took a little while to work out how to control the jet ski properly, but once I got the hang of it it was excellent fun (if a little dubious from an ecological point of view!)

One of the minor pleasures was sitting on our room balconies in the evening, having a drink and watching life go buy. Each evening the cruise ships sailed past, leaving St John's on their way to their next stop.

While I find myself liking the idea of taking a cruise more as I get older, I do think you much miss a lot by having just 1 day per island.

This photo also shows the hotel garden and pool area, with the main beach and bay on the left-hand side of the picture.