St. John's

St. John's is a capital in candy colors: lime, coral and sky-blue shopfronts stacked up from the harbor to a white baroque cathedral that has been rebuilt after every earthquake like a point of stubborn pride. Cruise days wind her up like a music box; quiet days let her exhale into what she is — a small town running a nation of three hundred sixty-five beaches.

The sensible traveller reads the town in a morning: the public market's saltfish banter, Redcliffe Quay's restored warehouses, the cathedral between its twin towers. Then the real Antigua: English Harbour and Nelson's Dockyard to the south — the Caribbean's only working Georgian shipyard —, Shirley Heights on Sunday when the steel bands take the sunset, and any beach the day suggests: there is one for every day of the year.

The Guide's honesty: when ships dock, the quay shops speak duty-free and diamonds — the town's soul is two streets uphill at the market —; the beach-a-day slogan is math, not myth, but the buses stop early: rent wheels or plan rides; and Barbuda, pink sand and frigate birds, deserves the ferry day more than a second souvenir.