Published: Jul 22, 2026
Our second day in Antigua was essentially a beach-hopping day. We visited Carlisle Bay, Jolly Beach, Galley Bay Beach, and Hideaway Beach, feasting our way through rice and beans, and coconut and pineapple smoothies. We also got very lucky in finding the famous Black Pineapple, the signature fruit of Antigua, known for being the sweetest and rarest variety there is. We found someone selling it by a roadside shop, and a waitress in a nearby restaurant very kindly cut it up for us – it was indeed delicious and very sweet. Because we tend to head out super early, we’ve found that we are consistently the only ones on the beach a lot of the time, which feels pretty special given how popular they become during peak hours.
It was a nice day – spent swimming, enjoying the views, admiring cacti (another new obsession of mine; I still can’t fathom how easily they grow here, and how massive they are!), and – you guessed it – looking for seashells. On a slight negative note, I have to say that some of the beaches here seem a little inaccessible, in that members of the public can’t fully enjoy them unless they’re part of a connecting resort. I have a small personal gripe related to this: I desperately needed to go to the bathroom on one of the beaches, and I wasn’t allowed which I found pretty unreasonable. It was a shame that we were practically shoed away a couple of times from a few of them – which hasn’t been the case on the other islands. All in all, a good last day on the island, but a slightly tainted experience too; one that is making us rethink whether we need to see any beaches at our next destination or whether we’d rather do something different!
A much-needed sea day followed Antigua. We did all the same restful things that we’ve usually done during days at sea, though this time we maxed out the home-cinema experience, watching a couple of Poirot movies on the TV in our cabin. It was a relaxing day, topped by some wonderful comedy at dinner: a middle-aged woman telling off her partner very loudly, urging him to eat his dinner and stop being a child. We didn’t need to attend any cruise entertainment after that – we were left laughing for a good while.
