Barbados - Family February Half Term Break!

On the 16th of February 2025, I travelled to Barbados for the school half-term week with my husband and our two teenage daughters

Having been to Barbados the same week in 2023, we decided this time to book an apartment self-catering instead of an inclusive hotel, and to stay on the south coast with easy access to local restaurants and shops so we could spend more time sightseeing on the island and sampling the local foods.

We stayed for 7 nights at the wonderful family-run Yellowbird Hotel in Barbados, situated in St Lawrence Gap, we booked a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment with a balcony with sea views and a wonderful roof terrace with amazing views across the sea!

The Yellowbird Hotel is a small family-run hotel, (sister property to the South Gap hotel and the Bluehaven apartments too) with a lovely pool and a great little restaurant called “On the Bay” highly recommended for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

Literally, on the doorstep of the hotel, there were some fabulous restaurants such as:- Castaways, Cafe Del Sol, Prima Bistro and a whole lot more which were just a few minutes walk away from us on the St Lawrence Gap strip, such as the wonderful Harlequins too.

The Yellowbird Hotel is directly opposite a narrow beach, mostly used by fishermen, but we also had lots of fun watching (from our rooftop terrace) the turtles swimming in this bay. You can walk down this strip of beach to Worthing Beach at low tide or you can take the road route to Worthing Beach, just five minutes walk from the hotel.

Worthing Beach has beach bars and restaurants for lunch, highly recommended is the “Seafood Shack” serving freshly cooked food at reasonable prices, such as fish cutter sandwiches, shrimp, chicken plus much more

Sunbeds and umbrellas were available for $10 Barbados dollars per sunbed (approximately $5 USD) with the umbrellas costing a little bit more.

During our stay we pre-booked to hire a Jimny Jeep for 2 days, we travelled to Welchman’s Gully, this is a tropical rainforest hideaway, home to monkeys, birds and other insect life such as giant snails and millipedes.

We had lunch on the stunning east coast at Bathesba, after which we went to Harrison’s caves and did the underground tram tour of the caves, pre-booking is advised for the caves or the zip wires (another activity) as often at peak time the tour and zip wires get booked up.

On our second day with the car, we took a trip up the west coast stopping at Bridgetown to see Rhianna’s house, with the road now named after her “Rhianna Drive” for our teenagers and the Rhianna monument.

We travelled up the west coast to visit Speightstown, Mullins Beach and Holetown before making our way to the stunning beachfront La Cabanne restaurant for lunch.

We took a wonderful catamaran trip with the fabulous team at “Cool Running” collected from our hotel at 845am, to board the catamaran in Bridgetown Marina at 930 am. The trip included two snorkel stops, to see the fish and we got to swim with some turtles!! Plus, a fabulous lunch and unlimited drinks, docking back in Bridgetown around 3 pm.

The Barbadian people the “Bajans” are around some of the friendliest you could meet.

We absolutely loved sampling local beers of Banks and Deputy, plus food such as fish cutter sandwiches, various varieties of fish such as flying fish, mahi-mahi, kingfish, swordfish and macaroni pie, breadfruit desserts much more.

I genuinely wish I could go on holiday to Barbados every year, it’s such a wonderful island and a destination I will never tire of, if you haven’t been, then you need to add Barbados to your travel list.