Scooters are another option but fraught with potential danger. Rental cars are moot because (a) you don’t need one and (b) they are prohibitively expensive, $50 a day and up. In fact, since such a large chunk of the land are taken up by a Club Med and Griffin’s airport and golf course, the other attractions-the hotels and their restaurants, the casino, a couple of small shopping centers-are all within a half-hour walk or, at night, a $5 taxi ride. Only 4 miles long and about a mile wide, Paradise is indeed user-friendly it was designed to be that way. The only reason to leave the island is for the airport, and some people don’t even have to leave Paradise to fly out.” Two commuter airlines offer daily flights to Miami and other Florida cities from Griffin’s Paradise Island International Airport. Most of the famous shops in Nassau have branches here. We’ve got the restaurants, the rooms, the beach. “In on a Wednesday or Thursday, home on the weekend. And they all tend to stay longer.”įor Americans, though, “it’s a quick hit,” said a manager at the Paradise Island Resort & Casino, one of Griffin’s hotels. “About 75% of our business is Euro,” said Sunrise’s administration manager, Dennis Sutton.

Sunrise Beach Club, on the north side of the island, just west of Two Mile Beach, caters to the Europeans. Europeans usually split their holidays, with a week in Miami or Orlando, Fla., and a week in the Bahamas.

Mine was a four-day, three-night package that cost just over $600 (purchased a week in advance), and that included round-trip air fare on Delta and accommodations and taxes at the Pirates Cove, the quaint name for the Holiday Inn on the north shore of the island.Īs a short-timer, I was very much in sync with other Americans here.

Paradise island resort and casino