Linda and I took the bus to downtown Bridgetown. We waited for the blue national bus, passing up a couple yellow buses, before hopping on one of the yellow buses. I got the last seat in the bus and the guy who takes the fares signaled to Linda she could ride shotgun. So, she had an up close and personal view of all the things the driver didn’t hit!
As we got closer to the downtown area traffic came to a stand still. The locals emptied the bus en mass, choosing to carry on by foot. We stayed on a little way longer and got off near Cheapside Farmer’s Market and headed to the Pelican Craft Market, which was a bust.
On our way towards the center of Bridgetown, we came across the fish market. It stinks to high heaven of fish and it was fascinating to see all the workers cleaning and skinning fish.
Fish market
We walked down Broad Street, with high end diamond and Emerald stores, past the parliament building, and over to the bus station, where we caught the number 13 to the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, housed in the former garrison. There’s some information on the wildlife display, (where we figured out the little animal we see darting across the country roads is a mongoose), historical information, a small military display and quite a nice area of African Art. Most of the rooms weren’t air conditioned and at one point I had to cut short my stay because I was too uncomfortable.
Barbados Museum
The museum is right across the street from the horse race track and it was race day. The Barbados Gold Cup looked like a high deal judging by the number of cars and people there were.
Barbados Gold Cup
We had lunch at a Little Jamacian place. The food was spicy and plentiful and the woman serving us was delighted to have us there.
We waited for the bus and finally gave up and hailed a taxi. After agreeing on the fare we hopped in, buckled our seat belts, and sped off. At one point the cabbie made a phone call and upon ending that call he took a severe right hand turn, out of the heavy, heavy traffic. He sped through little empty streets and at one point slowed, honking a couple of times. A guy walked out into the street and the cabbie held out money, one bill I couldn’t tell what denomination, and the guy in the street grabbed it as we kept going. Just doing a little business while doing business.