Barbados

Barbados is one of the Caribbean’s tourist hotspots, famed for its rum, its resorts, its nightclubs, and its beaches. It’s a densely settled corner of the Lesser Antilles that’s granted some notable cultural exports to the wider world, from Mount Gay rum to Rihanna.

Once the sole dominion of Arawaks and Island Caribs, Barbados fell under British control in the 1620s and remained as such until 1966—a remarkably stable colonial heritage by Caribbean standards. You can take in that heritage in the historic quarter of the capital Bridgetown, which includes 17th-century fortifications declared in 2011 a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The population is overwhelmingly Afro-Caribbean, but British cultural inflections are widely felt—not least in the nationwide love of cricket. Many traditions reflect a fascinating fusion of African and British influences, including the drum- and pennywhistle-driven “tuk bands” and the formal performances of the “Barbados Landship,” partly a unique evocation of the traumatic trans-Atlantic journeys of African slaves.

For an all-out party rich in expressions of Barbadian (“Bajan”) culture, schedule a visit to coincide with the Crop Over Festival, which marks the close of the yearly sugarcane harvest. Barbados’s epic resort, shopping, and clubbing districts—such as Saint Lawrence Gap near Bridgetown and the “Platinum Coast” along the western beachfront—have their own festive energy year-round. Here you’ll discover the Caribbean at its most upscale. By comparison, the rougher Atlantic shores of the east, with their surfable breaks and laidback towns, are a bit more farflung.

Meanwhile, you can’t throw a coconut in Barbados without hitting a rum distillery or shop—appropriate enough given the island’s touted (arguably) as the birthplace of the sugarcane-fermented liquor. As you might organize a vacation to France around wine or to Scotland around whiskey, you can let a taste for rum—from Mount Gay to Cockspur—guide your rambles around Barbados.

Aside from its beaches and diving sites, Barbados—a mostly level slab of limestone—isn’t quite as celebrated an ecotourism destination as many Caribbean islands, but you can still get a taste for its wilder side at sanctuaries such as Welchman Hill Gully and Chancery Lane Swamp.

Whether you want to mingle with the jetsetters, earn some on-the-ground cred as a rum connoisseur, or simply soak yourself in as much calypso as you can on a week's getaway, Barbados serves up both the sultry and the swanky. But any visit here ultimately comes down to the Bajans: their lust for life, their multicultural worldview, and their welcoming nature.