Port of Spain, Trinidad
National Museum & Art Gallery
117 Frederick Street
Port of Spain
,
Trinidad
Trinidad and Tobago
Tel: 868 623 5941
Royal Botanic Gardens
Cotton Hill
Maraval
Port Of Spain
,
Trinidad
Trinidad and Tobago
Tel: 868 622 9131
Concierge.com's insider take:
Trinidad's modern capital, Port of Spain, is also the country's undisputed hub of commerce, with petroleum-financed skyscrapers packed among gingerbread-trim cottages and bustling open-air markets. The waterfront is the best place to grasp the city's orientation, with barges plying the harbor and development shooting outward toward the hills. From the waterfront, it's an easy ten-minute walk to Woodford Square, a grassy central plaza abutting the Red House, home of Trinidad's parliament. The Magnificent Seven, a cluster of spectacularly faded colonial mansions dating back to the early 1900s in a hodgepodge of styles (French Baroque and neo-Romanesque), line Maraval Road to the northwest. The vast Queen's Park Savannah—site of Carnival's culmination each year—is the verdant heart of the city (exercise caution here at night). On the south side of the park, there's a free National Museum and Art Gallery, with exhibitions tracing the arc of Trinidadian history from Amerindian times through the colonial era. The northern end of the park hosts a modest zoo, the president's palace, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, among the oldest in the Western Hemisphere.