We booked a 12 night all-inclusive trip through Virgin Holidays to stay at Sandals Emerald Bay in Exuma, The Bahamas.

Deep within the idyllic waters of the Exumas, Sandals Emerald Bay seemed like the perfect choice for us as we were adamant about staying as close as possible to The Swimming Pigs tours. This luxury adult-only Bahamas resort was beautiful, the gardens were gorgeous, we had views from our elegant villa over the pristine, mile-long beach, and a choice of three different pools to swim in.

Overall we throughly enjoyed our stay. The resort boasted 7 restaurants which were good, but they failed to impress us the way we had expected.  We are quite adventurous with food in the way of different cuisines and are keen to try local food – we would have preferred to have some great Caribbean food over the seafood, Italian and french restaurants available at the resort.  Almost every dish we ordered was over-cooked which was a little disappointing (many have since told us it’s like this in many all-inclusive resorts).  The entertainment at Sandals was excellent, very relaxed but with something different every evening we were impressed and the Junkanoo party was fun.  Here, we tried the best food of our whole stay – the pea & dumpling stew with pork – delicious!

The water sports were included and we took advantage of the kayaking, sailing, snorkling & paddle boarding almost everyday.

I will say, it is a lovely feeling to get up each day, walk out of the villa and not have to worry about carrying a purse (to pay for things), to have to think about warm clothing (because it’s 32 degrees each day) or worry about security (we often left camera’s and phones unattended for hours without any concerns).