Nowadays, the entire west coast, including the Sandy Lane, seems like one long gated celebrity fortress, blocking not only the view of the beach but access to it, too. Beaches in Barbados are public, but some of them can be reached only by boat. In any case, apart from their sunsets, the west coast beaches are overrated—often overburdened, overbuilt, or eroded little coves with no room to walk and mostly rocky, hard-to-enter waters. There are, of course, exceptions, such as Gibbes Beach, or Mullins Beach, just below Speightstown. And it's from the west coast that you can see the vast cruise ships—transformed each night into spangled barges, or, as I come to think of them, fallen constellations. Chay Davis calls Barbados "an aspirational destination," the equivalent, I think, of buying a Mercedes that you can't afford. The island is expensive—the restaurants sometimes shockingly so.

Behind the high walls, there are lovely houses and some very lavish hotels. And sometimes there is nothing. Blocks and blocks of road at Clearwater Bay, the south end of the west coast, are sealed off by beachfront billboards covered with glossy and hopeful images of seemingly stalled resorts and villas under construction there. The whole notion of these overdone, out-of-scale palaces seems increasingly anachronistic.

The south coast is relaxed and easy—also best for swimming and walking, whether on the beach or along the new and still extending boardwalk. Many pavements on this side of the island are too narrow or crumbled for use, so the boardwalk is an inspired addition, particularly for the bikini-clad kittens who prowl this mile-long raised catwalk. But it's the wind-lashed east coast that's looking more and more like real luxury: empty, unspoiled, open to the sea, and with not one fancy hotel. Even though the old Atlantis Hotel has shut down (this retreat of the great Bajan novelist George Lamming—and much-missed supplier of the island's best ABC, or all-Bajan cuisine—is currently undergoing a thorough renovation), it's not hard to see why the locals have always chosen to spend their days off on the island's breezy side. On my own half-day off (a child has lost a sweater and I've returned alone to hunt for it), I can't resist a soak in nature's hot tub, the rock pool. Submerged up to my neck and—safe from wincing children—freely singing Joni Mitchell's "the wind is in from Africa . . .," I could sit here forever, watching the surfers skim the mesmerizing white ribbons of foam and admiring the massive, exquisitely eroded boulders that dot the shallows at Bathsheba like a stately sequence of public sculptures. Before I head home, I freshen up at the Sea Side Bar, a nearby rum shop (there is reportedly one of these charming dives per square mile on Barbados), where I hear Australian voices, Americans, and Brits.

Brits of all shapes, tastes, and pockets feel at home in Barbados. In addition to seaside towns called Hastings and Worthing, just as on England's own south coast, here you have an entire district called Scotland. The eleven parishes that make up Barbados are Christ Church, St. Andrew, St. George, St. James, (Continued from page 57) St. John, St. Joseph, St. Lucy, St. Michael, St. Peter, St. Philip, and St. Thomas. The port capital of Bridgetown not only has its own Nelson's Column, opposite the parliament buildings, in what until ten years ago was called Trafalgar Square (now National Heroes Square), but the Bridgetown Nelson has been standing at attention for nearly thirty years longer than his much loftier, or higher-up, twin in London's Trafalgar Square. Despite the renaming, you can't get away from it: Even the "native" food here was brought by the British; the bland breadfruit, specially cultivated as a good cheap fuel for slaves, was initially imported by Captain Bligh of the Bounty.