Travel Diaries: Baha Mar

The ins and outs of our recent family vacation

As you may have seen on Instagram, we recently ventured off to our first family beach vacation to the Bahamas!
While it took a few days to get used to travelling with Aren, we ended up having a great time , filled with lots of memories.
To be honest, I had never heard of Baha Mar before this trip. Clearly I was living under a rock because so many of you have mentioned that you’ve been thinking about vacationing there.
So it only seemed fair for me to give a full rundown of the hotel. From food to stroller accessibility, I’ve got you covered!
Read on for the details and if you have any questions I didn’t seem to answer send me a message and I’ll make sure to get back to you!!

Where we stayed:

We stayed at the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar , which is one of three properties at the Baha Mar Resorts. The other properties include the Rosewood and the SLS. All properties are linked together and you can easily walk from one to the next.
This makes dinner time amazing because you have so many restaurants at your disposal. You literally don’t have to leave the resort!
Coming with a baby, we really enjoyed this feature as we didn’t want to worry about taking cabs everywhere.
Baha Mar in general is located in Nassau, about ten minutes away from the airport.

Food

Number one question I received had to do with food! None of the hotels in the Baha Mar Resorts are all inclusive. They are all regular hotels meaning you have to eat out for all three meals.

Here’s a few things to consider :
Because of the three hotels on the property, there are countless eating options. You could literally try something new for every meal .

There’s a Starbucks! For those concerned with budget , mixing in a Starbucks breakfast or two is an option . There’s also the cute Cafe Madeline, another breakfast option that’s going to be a bit more pricy than Starbucks. Think yummy quiches and avocado toast!

By now you’ve seen the cute food trucks I’ve posted on social! Now, these aren’t regular food truck pricing, but they still come out a lot cheaper than eating at a restaurant or at the pool.
True story, the first few days I wasn’t overly impressed with the food truck offerings. Ara and I thought they were a bit over priced for what we were getting. Now we weren’t upset about this so much, because as the saying goes, if you’re at the pool, you’re going to get wet! But to be honest, I think we had just ordered the wrong thing. The last few days I had such great lunches that I had total fomo on the meals that I potentially missed out on!

What did we love? The tacos at El Jefe, the Burgers at Unami and the best Jerk Chicken Sandwhich at Flame to Smoke . So. Good.

We loved the dinner options. Katsuya (Japanese), Fi’lia (Italian) and Cleo (mediterranean) proved to be our three favourites. The restaurant are all quick walks from your room, and all stroller friendly. No one seemed to bat an eye that we were with Aren. We appreciated the fact that there were lots of restaurants with outdoor seating as well. It proved to be easier for us when we had to walk him around to relax him/keep him busy.

My favourites? The pasta at Fi’lia was incredible. As were the meatballs. We loved it so much we went twice!

Kid friendly?

Most definitely!

Here’s what I loved the most:

• Quick drive from the airport: 11 minutes according to Google Maps! I play close attention to Aren’s wake times and naps, so a quick drive was key for us.
• Competely accessible by stroller. Every pool. Every restaurant. It was perfect. When he was fussy I could take him on a nice long walk through the property and the pier. And in the evening, we just plopped him down in the stroller and off we went. There was plenty of space to park our Bugaboo at the pool as well. And at the restaurants the waitstaff would kindly remove a chair from our table so we could pull him in closer.
• Cribs/Playpens: The hotel had both on site, and they actually sent us both to the room, along with baby shampoo and lotion just for Aren. While we didn’t end up using the crib (it was a little too high for me) the playpen came in handy.
• Overall Customer Service: Everyone went out of their way to make sure the little guy was ok. He was a hit with the female wait staff, as well as the guys! At the pool we were always given an umbrella. And we even had the sweetest bartender keep Aren’s teething toys in the freezer for us! Definintely handy! The housekeeping was also super sweet and worked around Aren’s nap schedule on those off days he needed a nap indoors.

Overall thoughts:

The first few days I wasn’t 100 percent sold on the property but by day 3 I was a believer 😉
I think it just had to do with the fact that when you are without child you adapt more quickly to the resort and can easily figure out what’s what. With child it takes a little bit longer, plus you’re exhausted! Around day 3 Ara and I literally contemplated stretching out our vacation because it was shaping up so nicely. We would definitely come back to the Grand Hyatt in a heart beat!

The hotel itself is so photogenic and full of charming corners and colour. It was super clean, well maintained and beautiful. The bathrooms around the pool/beach area were always immaculate which is a huge plus. My only negative is that the bathrooms outside didn’t have changing tables, however I never asked the staff so there is a chance that some of them did, I just never picked the right one 😉 There were so many pools, you never had to ‘reserve’ a chair in the early am like you do with most resorts. We would head down to the pool no earlier than 930/10 everyday and always had a chair with an umbrella.

Cost wise you can be careful with your spending, however like most vacations, it’s the alcohol that gets you! Ordering wine by the bottle is the cheapest option (if you’re a wine drinker).

Next time we would love to potentially check out the Rosewood. It seemed so dreamy and relaxed! We would also love to come back with a set of grandparents so we could take a little time for ourselves and try out the spa and more adult pools. And have dinner after 730pm but that’s another blog post entirely 😉

Have any more questions? Feel free to ask me via email, comment or IG direct message! I’ll make sure to answer!

Heading for a romantic getaway I’d suggest the Rosewood! Bachelorette party or girls weekend? SLS for sure! And for pretty much everything else I’d highly recommend the Grand Hyatt, especially if you have a family!

Above Photography by Braxton Gardiner Photography