Cobblers Cove – Barbados

Strictly speaking, there’s no shortage of places to stay in Barbados. But you can count on a single hand the places that make the cut, style-wise. And they’re not the resorts you’re offered when you book a package vacation to the Caribbean. With just 40 suites, Cobblers Cove is one of the island’s few boutique hotels, blissfully free of loud tropical prints, boxy air-conditioned rooms and the telltale trappings of a mega-resort.

How to explain the comparative elegance of Cobblers Cove? In short: old money. A sugarcane planter and politician, a direct descendant of one of the island’s original sugar barons, built the house as a weekend getaway for his family in 1943. Without irony, the family called the coral and white plantation house “Camelot” – today it’s known as The Great House. Together with adjacent buildings that were added when the property was transformed into a luxury hotel, the building contains refined colonial-style suites, including one with a private rooftop terrace and plunge pool. But even the most standard Garden Suites have plenty to offer: bright and spacious, with Egyptian cotton linens, marble bathrooms, and perfectly civilized living rooms opening onto private terraces or balconies. The look isn’t in any way modern or minimalist, but gracious and even romantic, inspired by the island’s colonial era — think wicker and crisp white, terra cotta tiles and seashells, verdant landscaping, with views of the deep blue sea framed by painted wooden window frames.

Open to the sea air and expansive views of the ocean, the Camelot Restaurant lives up to its name. Michael Harrison is purportedly the only native-born chef who, after training abroad — in this case, in London — has returned to the island to cook in a five-star setting. There’s yoga and a full treatment list at the hotel’s Sea Moon Spa. The cocktail bar inside the historic Camelot has a nostalgic house special: a rum punch that’s also served as a welcome drink to arriving guests. And outside, on the beach, there’s waterskiing and snorkeling in the startlingly clear water, plus swimming with sea turtles if you book ahead. Sea turtles stick to a schedule, it seems. No reservations necessary, however, to observe the family of green monkeys living on the large fig tree near the sand — part of the beautifully maintained tropical gardens at Cobblers Cove.