The 11 Best Barbados Luxury Hotels

Barbados

Barbados divides itself cleanly in two. The Atlantic side is wild and windswept, but the west is filled with coral reefs and some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. The Platinum Coast runs from Speightstown south to Bridgetown behind a string of coral reefs that flatten the water into something close to glass, and the beaches it protects are among the calmest in the Caribbean.

This is where the best luxury resorts in Barbados have always concentrated, and with good reason. The reef-sheltered shoreline means you can swim at any hour, in water clear enough to see the bottom at fifteen feet.

But Barbados has a second plot going on beneath the surface. The island produced the world's first commercially distilled rum in the 1620s, and many of those original sugar estate distilleries are still operating today. A private tour through one of them, past copper pot stills and barrels aging in the Caribbean heat, connects you to four centuries of island history in about ninety minutes.

The Platinum Coast gives you the afternoon. The rum estates give you the evening. Between the two, Barbados makes a strong case for staying longer than you planned.