After leaving work early on Thursday, we travelled down to London on Hull Trains, then had an hour Tube ride on the Piccadilly Line. After enjoying our evening at the Sofitel at London Heathrow Terminal 5, we had an early wake up call on Friday morning. We used express checkout to save ourselves any bother and then went to the concierge to order a taxi to terminal 3. You may wonder why we didn’t stay at terminal 3, but we really like the Sofitel and its restaurant, Belle Epoque, and it was no hassle to get a taxi.

It took about fifteen minutes to get there, and after being dropped off we loaded ourselves up with our bags and headed for check-in. We went to bag drop first where we had to get our passports checked. Once we’d got rid of our luggage we went through security which was great as there was no need to remove liquids or electronics from our hand baggage. I had to have my shoes checked on a new device to scan my shoes. I had to put my foot on one by one, to get my shoe scanned, but it only took a minute. That was the quickest I’ve ever been through security in the UK. We are finally catching up with the rest of the world.

We spent a couple of hours in the lounge before heading to gate 24, where we then had a long transfer by bus to the plane. We boarded and settled in to our seating area and relaxed.

The 9.5 hour flight went by reasonably quickly. I managed to watch a couple of films and a few episodes of Derry Girls. When we landed at Lynden Pindling International Airport in Nassau, it was a bit chaotic before passport control. We had to complete an immigration form which was alright if I could find my pen. Could I heckers like find it (until I arrived at our hotel). I asked an immigration officer where I could find a pen, to which he replied “near the band”. Yes, there was a band playing to greet us all.

After completing said form we joined the queue and it probably took 30-40 minutes to get to booth number 13 where a lovely lady greeted us with “welcome home”.

She stamped our passport and headed for the baggage claim area where our bags had already been removed from the carousel. We then looked for a sign with our names on, for our hotel transfer, only to be told there is a place inside the airport for Sandals guests. A helpful local showed us where it was; a lovely space with another jolly local who labelled up our bags, gave us a bottle of water each, and we then waited for the transfer vehicle.

After about ten minutes a driver arrived, scooped our bags up and put them in the car. The look on our faces must have been a picture. We were being transported to the resort in a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost! Wowzer.

Oswaldo, the driver, chatted away to us about the Bahamas, telling us lots of information about the islands, of which there are 700. New Providence, the island where Nassau is, measures 21 x 7 miles and has 9 million visitors per year. Across all the islands there is a total population of 400,000 people, with more than half living and working in Nassau.

Calling us “king and queen” Oswaldo also told us that Sean Connery had a private mansion on New Providence, close to where some scenes of Thunderball and Casino Royale were filmed.

Cars are also driven on the left, the same as in the UK, but Oswaldo also told us that both left hand drive and right hand drive vehicles are driven there. In fact, the Silver Ghost was left hand drive.

We also passed the Bob Marley Resort and Spa, which him and his wife Rita moved into after an assassination attempt on him in 1976. It was his house and later became a holiday resort. It has been undergoing renovations after trade was affected by Covid 19.

We were also told about other places to visit while we are here, such as the Straw Market

We arrived at Sandals to be greeted by Logesh, one of the hospitality staff. He helped us check in and then we had a guided tour of the resort. There are ten restaurants at Sandals and Logesh had booked us into Butch’s Island Chop House for our first night. They pretty much organise everything for us if needed, so we left it to him to arrange the other restaurant bookings. After showering and getting ready, Logesh returned to show us where the restaurant was. He organised a cocktail for us both before leaving us to it.

The restaurant is a steak and seafood restaurant with plenty to choose from. I chose Dungeness crab cake to start followed by steak Diane. At this point in the evening it was getting on for midnight UK time, so we headed back to our room straight afterwards and fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows.