Talk:Barbados

Formatting and language conventions For articles about Barbados, please use the 12-hour clock to show times, e.g. 9AM-noon and 6PM-midnight. Please show prices in this format: B$100, and not BBD 100, Bds$100 or $100 (which could be unclear as US dollars are also commonly used in the country). Please use British spelling.

Administrative divisions

The article poses the question Administrative divisions (Are these regions?). I'd say not; with an area of 400-odd square kilometers and 200,000 odd inhabitants, there doesn't seem to be much need to divide the island into regions. So I've rephrased the Regions and Cities to reflect this. -- (WT-en) Chris j wood 14:09, 19 Jul 2004 (EDT)

I think this article needs an overhaul to bring it in line with Project:How to de-factbook a country page. We shouldn't be trying to work the often not traveller-centric CIA stats into the templates, they just don't flow... that said, Barbados does have "regions" that are used both by locals and travel guides with common issues that can be addressed on region pages. I'll try and take a stab at it... (WT-en) Majnoona 14:26, 19 Jul 2004 (EDT)

Barbados is divided into Parishes. For that whole history you'd have to look up the history of the Church of England in Barbados or the Parliament which the Church of England was a part of. See: http://www.anglican.bb/hist -&- http://www.barbadosparliament.com/history.php 151.203.49.183 16:28, 6 May 2007 (EDT)

This is CaribDigita. Suggest you see Wikipedia

I've already written a great deal about Barbados. Although "WikiTravel" and "Wikipedia" are two different content licenses it may give some on here an idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbados

By adding [[WikiPedia:Barbados]] to the page, I have provided a link in the sidebar. There is no need to add the URL to the page. The talk page is also linked in the same way. WikiPedia:Talk:Barbados -- (WT-en) Huttite 03:24, 19 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Cities?

I'm not sure if it makes sense to have separate city pages. For example, almost the entire stretch from Bridgetown to Speightstown via Holetown is full of resort hotels, restaurants and the like. From the perspective of a traveler living in Holetown, all these restaurants (including The Cliff, Daphne's, Sassafras on one side and Fish Pot on the other) are in the same area. Seems odd to have to list some restaurants in individual cities while others in the country page. In a sense, Bridgetown is just one of the attractions in Barbados rather than a separate city entry.--(WT-en) Wandering 14:42, 24 May 2007 (EDT)

If there are city articles, all of the restaurant listings should be in them, not in the country article. The country article's Eat section should (in most cases) just talk about the local cuisine. Whether or not it's worth dividing the island into city articles is a separate question. In terms of geographic size, its possible that a single article could cover the whole island, but since I've never been there, I really can't offer an opinion on that. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 14:59, 24 May 2007 (EDT)

I guess what I'm asking is what should we do with restaurants that are not in any city? In Barbados itself, restaurants tend to get listed by parish which corresponds (somewhat) to the wikivoyage notion of district. Many of the top restaurants are not in any city - though they are by necessity in this village or that but we can't really have pages for each and every village. Perhaps, in this case, it makes sense to list restaurants in either place (city and country) depending on whether the restaurant is in an identifiable city. Alternatively, one could drop city pages in the case of Barbados and have country pages and parish (district) pages. Barbados, by the way, is 167 sq miles in area to, say, New York City's 303 sq miles (wikipedia).--(WT-en) Wandering 15:44, 24 May 2007 (EDT)

The idea behind Wikivoyage's geographic hierarchy is that the "bottom" level is an article about the place where you get a hotel and spend your days/nights. If an island is small enough that you might have breakfast on the north side, spend the afternoon sightseeing on the east side, have dinner on the south side, and go back to your hotel on the west side, it makes the most sense to treat it a single destination. If it's larger than that (and Barbados probably is, even if it's only half the size of NYC), and the cities aren't a good way of dividing it, maybe a simple geographic division would make more sense. For example, maybe regions such as West Barbados, South Barbados, Northeast Barbados, and Central Barbados (or local names for these areas if there are any). Or the parishes might work, if that's a more useful way for a traveler to make sense of the territory. In that case I'd suggest giving the region article names like "Saint John Parish" to avoid conflicts with all the other "Saint John"s out there. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 17:14, 24 May 2007 (EDT)

If no one objects, I'll divide Barbados into parishes and delete the individual town pages. (Should I be looking for objections elsewhere as well.) The reasons are that sights, hotels, and restaurants are strung out all over the island, more often than not they are not associated with any of the major towns. Also Bajans think in Parishes rather than towns (their phone directory is divided into parishes).--(WT-en) Wandering 20:32, 15 June 2007 (EDT)

Well, I started working on the Parish pages but now think that eleven pages, one per parish, is a bit excessive. Perhaps it would be better to divide Barbados into five or six districts: Western Barbados, Southern Barbados, Bridgetown, Eastern Barbados, Central Barbados, and perhaps a separate Northern Barbados. Needs some mulling over, this.--(WT-en) Wandering 15:40, 10 July 2007 (EDT) Divided into five districts. I included St. Lucy in Western Barbados because I figured there is not much point in making a Northern Barbados page. I clubbed St. James and St. Peter into Western Bbd because most visitors probably view them as seamless. And, I put St. Phillip into Eastern Bbd (though SE would be technically better) because visitors tend to think of Crane on the Eastern or 'other' side of the island.--(WT-en) Wandering 11:52, 16 July 2007 (EDT)

List of hotels

I am from India and I am looking for a list of 3,4 or 5 star hotels in barbados and their contact nos and websites. could anyone please list it here. Thanks. (WT-en) Anonymous

Districts/regions

Reading above, I can see how and why it happened, but a three level structure for an island about 25 miles long x 10 miles wide is a bit odd. In effect we have five regions/districts and then four city articles sitting below those. The region articles are not normal Wikiravel regions as they were specifically set up (see reasons above) to contain listings. I do not think these should use a region template for that reason. Any ideas on how we can better deal with this? For example, Barbados -> Western Barbados -> Holetown seems a bit excessive for such a tiny island. If it went Barbados -> Holetown, how to handle Western Barbados, when Holetown is clearly a part of that area? --(WT-en) Burmesedays 01:04, 20 May 2010 (EDT)

Why not just remove the regions? (WT-en) LtPowers 08:11, 20 May 2010 (EDT)

Reading above, I think the logic for creating them to start with was that lots of valid listings are not in towns or cities. The regions were really created to take care of those I think. This is a problem with small islands. Where to put that great restaurant or hotel that is in the middle of nowhere?--(WT-en) Burmesedays 13:14, 20 May 2010 (EDT)

It's actually a problem throughout the world, even in the United States. I know of several rural attractions that don't belong to any real article-worthy destination. Knowing that doesn't help us here, though. It sounds like the cities kinda blend into each other; would it work to make the regions the lowest-level articles? Maybe by dividing them up more? (WT-en) LtPowers 15:29, 20 May 2010 (EDT)

I have now drawn the map but the regions issue remains tricky and unsolved. I cannot see the point of regions except as repository for listings that do not fit into one of the city articles. This is a tricky one. Frankly, given the size of the island, all the content could be in one country article!--(WT-en) Burmesedays 01:45, 26 July 2011 (EDT)

To address LtPowers point, I think we should treat this problem with rural regions the same way we resolved it for outer huge city districts—amalgamate the tiny rural towns and the surrounding countryside into an article. That's really what any other guidebook would do. I was pondering this same issue at Talk:Montgomery_County_(Maryland)#Map.

Back to Barbados, though. Both the "Western Barbados" and "Southern Barbados" are basically written about individual parishes, which is too fine grained. With my above point in mind, I'd suggest the following, bottom level articles, with numbers corresponding to the parish map at WP:

1) Southern Barbados: Hastings → Crane Beach (1,10)

2) Bridgetown: Everything in St Michael Parish

3) Western Barbados: Paynes Bay → St Lucy Parish (4,9,7) (Merge content from Holetown & Speightstown)

4) Central-Eastern Barbados: 2,3,5,6,11 --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 10:23, 26 July 2011 (EDT)

Peter, you mean Barbados → four bottom level articles? I can see that working.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 11:06, 26 July 2011 (EDT)

Exactly. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 11:40, 26 July 2011 (EDT)

I also like Peter's approach. It looks like a good solution and it's similar to the way I've been thinking of handling some rural regions I've encountered. - (WT-en) Shaund 11:43, 26 July 2011 (EDT)

Thanks Peter and Shaun. I will try to finish the map and region plan on that basis. Regional issues in these tiny islands are so much more complex than in a huge country. Wait until you get you teeth into Maluku Peter.... I am bamboozled at the moment:). --(WT-en) Burmesedays 11:49, 26 July 2011 (EDT)

They're not more complex; it's just that we haven't gotten down to that level in most large countries yet. We will eventually; I'm already butting up against it in New York (state) as I drill down to the county level. (WT-en) LtPowers 13:23, 26 July 2011 (EDT)

Hmmmmm. Not sure I agree with that. Let's see. Islands and island groups have certainly caused me the most mental strain. The issues are often non-standard.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 05:42, 1 August 2011 (EDT)

I have followed this discussion and am happy to see that I have reached similar solutions for some Denmark and China articles with the same issues. One question though: would it not be better to move the four articles to Cities and Other destinations, as they are not region articles?, --(WT-en) ClausHansen 07:30, 1 August 2011 (EDT)

Seven years later: just to reflect that IMO the four-region division of Barbados seems natural, traveller-oriented and fit for purpose. The meta-blurb recommends looking at the German version: I beg to suggest it's the other way round, as de:Barbados subdivides into umpteen itsy bitsy villages; other languages haven't taken that approach. The one aspect in English that still needs a bit of think is the sub-pages on scuba-diving, which are ill-structured and suffer from Wikipeditis. Grahamsands (talk) 21:55, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Currency, time and spelling conventions

Below is a proposed infobox to let readers know which formatting conventions to use in Wikivoyage articles. Do you agree with these proposals? If you have direct knowledge of what is most commonly used in the country, please let us know. Ground Zero (talk) 22:08, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Moved to the top of this page. Ground Zero (talk) 04:07, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Mobile data coverage

4G data coverage is good in Bridgetown, as well as through Holetown up to Speightstown and to the northern centre of the island near the Barbados Wildlife Reserve (although perhaps this is because there is a mobile tower just outside of it). Oistins and Bathsheba also have good signal. The coverage seems to have improved since the article was last updated in 2022. The only blind spot I have experienced is in the very centre of the island en route to Bathsheba from Bridgetown.

Mobile data is quite expensive here. A Digicel data-only plan of 20GB for 30 days costs Bds100, including the SIM card which they charge Bds15 for. Funny side note - every Digicel SIM Card comes with 500MB activation credit, so I got a text message telling me that my data was running out. The sales rep at the Digicel outlet informed me with a smile to just ignore this. I'd suggest carefully measuring how much data you are using while here. I have found 4G to be more reliable than WiFi.

Tom93eire (talk) 14:41, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Buses, Minivans, Route Taxis, Public Transport

I have found the public transport to be very different to many other countries. There are many difference types of buses, minivans, and route taxis, none of which are listed on Google Maps directions. Route Taxis are also known as "ZR"s due to this being shown on their registration.

The single fare for any journey of any length in any direction is Bds3.50 Transport board buses will not give change, however the minibuses and route taxis will. Just don't try to break a 100.

https://ta.gov.bb/Routes/Minibus/ Has a lot of information about the different routes for minibuses and route taxis. The website www.transportboard.com has some good info about the state-run buses and their routes.

If travelling from Bridgetown: There is the Princess Alice Terminal, which has little roofing, so be sure to bring an umbrella just in case. There's also the Fairchild street terminal, where you can purchase a bus token for Bds3.50. This has a lot of terminals and each terminus has the destination(s) printed above. Then further along the river, on the opposite side, there is the Constitution River terminal, which is for Minibuses and Route Taxis only. What I found was that the Fairchild Street terminal seems to be where many of the pensioners and people with survivor's benefits, etc., would board in order to avail of their government subsidized free travel. Seats are limited, so, it may be better to walk further down the river to the Constitution River terminal, where you can get a Minibus or Route taxi for the same price.

Some of the minibuses and route taxis are reminiscent of the "Crazy Taxi" games. Blasting reggae music and cramming as many people in as possible. If in doubt, ask the driver or a local if the vehicle stops where you want to get to. This is not always a guarantee, however, as I recently found out! Tom93eire (talk) 12:21, 13 March 2024 (UTC)