Day 2 - Walking and Eating

Today we woke up nice and early, and after watching the horses swim at Pebble beach from our balcony, we headed down to the hotel cafe for some breakfast. Some huge raisin bran muffins and a coffee later, we were sat by the pool with great views and feeling very much at home already. After we finished eating we walked into Bridgetown for our walking food tour. We were a little early so we went to sit in Golden Square Freedom Park. There are some great art installations and we found our first (of many) free-to-use water stations. It also had access to the free public access WiFi so we could get online and check what we wanted to (a high-speed connection).

When it got a little closer to the 10:30 am start time for our tour we moved over to Independence Square, just over the road, and found Paulette our guide for the morning. She told us the history of the area and explained about the tour and why it is named Lickrish. We would be going to 6 different places for food around the city so we were warned to pace ourselves, as the local food can be very filling!

We headed off down the same street we had walked down the day before, and stopped outside an unassuming doorway, with an exchange shop next door. We had walked past this door, and not even given it a second look. We walked up the stairs dodging friendly locals who were getting their lunch and made our way out to the balcony. I'm sure lots of the people walking below had no idea that the restaurant was even there.

At this first stop, we had fried Marlin, breadfruit, white sweet potato and pickle. Breadfruit is a staple for Bajan's and they usually have their own tree. It's a bit like a potato and can be prepared in different ways, so this was on my list of things I wanted to try. If you get the opportunity to try breadfruit, I recommend you do. It all tasted amazing and even though we had been warned how filling it could be, I ate it all! It was too good to waste any of it! It was well-cooked local food, exactly what we wanted to experience.

Our second stop was just around the corner (near where we had breakfast yesterday) and was a little food truck selling fishcakes. Again, if you didn't know it was there, you could have easily walked passed it, as it was tucked away. Since we had already tried some fishcakes at the beach, I was ready for some more today. They came in little paper bags and they had their own pepper sauce to add to give them some Bajan zing. Again they all got eaten pretty quickly.

Our third stop was at Fran's bakery, one of the locals' favourites, and Paulette had to call ahead to make sure she saved our dishes for us or we would have been disappointed, because the locals would have bought them all! Here we had Lentil patties (meat eaters had a different variety) and some sweetbread. We sat on the side of the street and tried to resist eating it all since we weren't even halfway through the tour yet. The lentil patties were nicely spiced but not overly spicy hot and I could have eaten quite a few more. The sweetbread is a dense cake and was a little drier than the cakes we have back home, but still equally delicious. I can imagine a slice with a cocktail in hand would have been great. I saved most of it for later, since I definitely wanted to try the rest of the food on the tour if the food so far had been anything to go by.

We walked through the hustle and bustle of the side streets with all of the sellers and their stalls (generally in front of a no vending sign 😂) and went into a little mall with a fruit stand by the door. Here we got to try one of the local fruit drinks, Tamarind juice. This was something else that I had never heard of, so it was great to be able to try it, as I probably wouldn't have tried it if I had just seen it on a menu whilst out and about. It was sweet and tart and a bit like apple juice, but different. Well worth trying if you see it while you are on your travels. We also got to have some slices of local Mango as it was in season.

Stop 5 was in another little mall that I wouldn't have even looked at normally for another traditional meal. We have Marlin with cornmeal cou-cou (similar to grits or polenta or a dense mashed potato) with okra mixed into it. Another great meal, simple but very tasty and something I would order again if I saw it on the menu. The photo below doesn't do it justice...it was delicious!

The final stop was at the Agapey Chocolate factory for some of their gourmet ice cream. Agapey is a small artisan chocolate maker, with glass walls in the shop so you can see the process happening. Their homemade ice cream is made from coconut milk, so is Vegan, and has a slight coconut hint under the flavour. We tried the Chocolate and also the Rum Caramel, both were an excellent way to finish off the 'meal'.

Feeling very happy and full Paulette walked us back to the start point so we knew where we were. It had been an amazing morning (we finished at around 2:30) and all the food had been great. Paulette has great knowledge of the area and was informative, fun and enthusiastic.

Book your tickets here #notaffiliated

https://www.lickrishfoodtours.com/tour/

We headed back to the hotel to embrace the Lickrish lifestyle (aka - chilling with a full belly of yummy food!) and sat on the balcony watching the waves and relaxing for a few hours. Bliss!

For the evening we wanted to explore more of the boardwalk area and see how far it went, not far apparently :). We took the ZR down as it looked like it could rain at any minute and went to the far end of the boardwalk area. We cut down the side of the Accra Hotel and arrived straight on the beach, the boardwalk was just a few steps to our right. We walked along but this end seems to be a lot let busy than the end near Chill's Bar. We were still in low season so this might change, I'll update you once we get moved as I'm sure we will frequent this area. We found a restaurant that looked quite nice and we were going to walk along a bit further to see what else was available, but the heavens opened and made the decision for us!

We headed into Tapas, and were taken to one of the upstairs tables with views over the beach and fire lanterns below. the restaurant is open sided and we could see and hear the rain lashing down outside......Tapas restaurant was definitely a good call! The menu is all done via a QR code, which is found on a leaflet on the tables, so we had a quick look and decided to get some of the smaller dishes to share between us tapas style (which did seem to confuse them a little - we were using the Spanish interpretation, whereas it seemed they treated Tapas as meaning starter course. All good whichever way you look at it, as the food was delighful) and some mocktails to wash it down with. It was just the right amount of food to leave room for a delicious dessert since we had had quite a bit of food earlier in the day. The mains we saw coming out were quite large (think of that scene at the beginning of the Flintstones cartoons!) so we were happy with what we had chosen. It was a lovely end to the day, and we hopped back on the ZR to get back to the hotel, feeling very much at home and loving the warm weather even when it has a bit of a downpour. I will take warm rain anyday over the cold rain in the UK.