Colony Club: Blame It On The Rain
Written: Nov 26 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Lovely beachfront resort, charming, with all the amenities.
Cons: A little off the beaten track, lousy TV selection.
The Bottom Line: Great pools, not so great when it's raining.
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| CurtisEdmonds's Full Review: Colony Club |
Before I even start, look, yeah, everybody knows that you're not supposed to go to the Caribbean in hurricane season. But we checked. We really did. We went to the National Hurricane Center website and everything, and they said there wasn't going to be anything happening that week, and it was late in the season anyway, so why not go to Barbados for a week when we could?
And it's not like there really was a hurricane, anyway, because there wasn't, just a couple of tropical depressions rolling around, and Puerto Rico got the worst of it anyway. We were just on the edge of it, but that was enough to get drenched on some days and wet the rest of it. A nice, lovely, well-deserved relaxing vacation, but a little on the wet side.
The Colony Club - how can I say this in a nice way - is made for better weather than what we had. In nice weather, you can go out on the beach and snorkel to your heart's content at the adjacent coral reef. (I think of all those dreary holes I used to stay at when I was doing a lot of business travel; almost all of them could have been improved by having a coral reef within swimming distance.) We couldn't do that; bad weather makes the Caribbean a bit too restless for snorkeling. In nice weather, you can hang out by the pool and sunbathe and get pina coladas at the swim-up bar, and there were times when it was nice enough to do just that, and you can't ask for better in this life. In nice weather, you can go out on your private veranda and swim in the plunge pool just outside (although you should be careful in doing this, the steps leading to the pool are a bit narrow and steep, at least they were in our room). In nice weather, you can wander through the well-manicured grounds, sit by the waterfall, and enjoy the lush tropical greenery.
But if it's raining, well, it's hard to do any of that. You have basically two choices; you can go elsewhere or stay in your room. "Go elsewhere" is the more attractive option; there are many wonderful things to do and see in Barbados, and we ended up spending a lot of time outside the resort doing them. The problem is that the Colony Club is located a ten-dollar (twenty Bajan dollars) cab ride from Holetown, which is the main tourist area on the Platinum Coast. Holetown is great - lots of nice restaurants and shops - but it isn't quite in walking distance (and Barbados itself is not well-found in sidewalks for even intrepid tourists). This is a plus if you just want to hang out in your resort, but it's kind of a minus if you want to get out and do stuff. (This was made worse by road closures caused by flooding due to all the rain; the main coast road between Holetown and Bridgetown was blocked the whole time we were there.)
Staying in your room would be a much more attractive option except for one little thing. The rooms themselves are very nice indeed. The Colony Club was actually that at one point in time, a colonial building, and the interior walls are this gorgeous limestone stuff, set off with tile floors. The bathroom is adequately spacious. There's an in-room safe and a refrigerator, and you get free bottles of water every night. The beds are on the firm side but nice enough, and there are lots of little throw pillows everywhere - it took me a couple of nights to figure out quite the right pillow configuration, between the big squishy bed pillows and the little firmer throw pillows, but I managed.
But the television is dreadful. Now, I know, nobody goes to the Caribbean to watch TV. And I recognize the absurdity of it all -- here is your old pal CDE, on a tropical vacation with his wife, having the time of our lives, and here he is complaining because his beautiful Caribbean resort just has one thing on the TV, and it's Gordon Ramsey yelling at people. But when the skies open, and it's four in the afternoon, and the wind is blowing the rain right into your veranda, and there are only eight channels to choose from and two of them are showing rugby, well, it's just ugly. And they're random channels - BBC America for the Brits, National Geographic, MTV2, the Lifetime TV-movie channel, the CBS station out of Puerto Rico, an African-American religious station out of North Carolina, a local Barbados station, and the ESPN international feed. (Ask me how I remember the lineup. Go ahead. Ask.)
And - this is the kicker - it was satellite TV. Why the Colony Club doesn't love its guests enough to give them HBO I will never understand.
This is a minor quibble, I understand, and it should be forgiven, because otherwise things are just so gosh-darn nice. We got (as part of our package) free access to the Colony Club's breakfast buffet, which is maybe a little spotty in places (limp French toast, store-bought Danishes) but which (emphatically) caters to the overwhelmingly Brit tourist contingent, so that there were big fat tasty sausages every day, and that is a good thing. Lunch is good if you don't want to shell out the twenty bucks to get you to Holetown and back; I specifically recommend the flying fish sandwich. Only had dinner there one night (there is a dress code for dinner, beware) when they were having the limbo dancers in; there was some kind of buffet which I don't remember very clearly except for the roti, which wasn't half-bad if you like curry.
The staff was uniformly very nice and helpful, if not overwhelmingly efficient. (Our plane got in early and we had to cool our heels in the elegant lobby for almost an hour before our room was ready.) There is a well-stocked library with a slow-but-usable Internet connection (but be aware that fussy elderly Brit tourists will NOT appreciate you taking the time to check out your fantasy football team when they want online).
Now, maybe, this all sounds sort of negative, like I didn't like the Colony Club, that I'm picking on its faults. And I don't want that, so I will mention that the Colony Club had (when we were there) engaged an artist to paint pictures of the hotel, and we bought one, and I'm actually going to hang it on the wall this weekend because it was such a nice vacation and the Colony Club was just such a lovely spot and we love Barbados so much. Just not in hurricane season.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
CurtisEdmonds
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Member: Curtis Edmonds
Location: Trenton, New Jersey
Reviews written: 88
Trusted by: 461 members
About Me:
Check out my blog - http://www.txreviews.com/blog/
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