With a gorgeous location beside the white-sand beaches of Carlisle Bay, busy Bridgetown is the capital and only city of Barbados. One of the oldest cities in the Caribbean, the architecture of Bridgetown today is largely a blend of attractive, balconied colonial buildings, warehouses and brash modern office blocks. The centre of activity is the Careenage, parking place for numerous sleek yachts overlooked by the Barbadian parliament. A number of the island’s main religious buildings are within five minutes’ walk of here, including St Michael’s Cathedral and the synagogue, both erected on the sites of their mid-seventeenth-century originals.

Just north of the city there are a couple of rum factories that you can tour, while Tyrol Cot is an unusual nineteenth-century house that was home to two of the island’s leading post-war politicians, Sir Grantley Adams and his son Tom Adams.