Paradise Island

Paradise Island was Hog Island until 1959, a strip of sand and scrub across Nassau's harbour where the pigs were kept; then a grocery heir bought it, renamed it, planted a fourteenth-century French cloister on a hill for good measure, and the Bahamas' most famous address was born. Two bridges tie it to the capital; on it stand Cabbage Beach's long white arc, a golf course, the quietest luxury in the islands and, since 1998, Atlantis — the pink towers, the aquariums, the lagoons and slides of a resort so large it counts as a destination in its own right.

The traveller crosses the bridge and chooses the day's Paradise: the whole of Cabbage Beach at morning, before the day-passes arrive; the marine habitats of Atlantis, which hold more sea life than most aquariums, on a rainy or a curious afternoon; the Cloister and the Versailles Gardens at sunset, when the stones the Huntington Hartford money moved from France look at Nassau's harbour; a kayak in the lagoons; and, always, the walk back over the bridge to Nassau itself — for the straw market, the fish fry at Arawak Cay and, on Boxing Day and New Year's, the drums of Junkanoo.

The Guide's honesty: Paradise Island is a resort island and prices like one — a day pass to Atlantis is expensive and worth it exactly once, and dinner is cheaper on the Nassau side of the bridge —; the beach is public in law and crowded near the hotels, quieter at its eastern end; hurricanes are a June-to-November fact, and the islands rebuild with practice; the water taxi from Nassau's waterfront is a pleasanter crossing than the taxi; and the Bahamas are seven hundred islands, of which this is the most built and the least typical — a fine first page, not the whole book.