St. Nicholas Abbey and Steam Railway — Attraction in Barbados

St. Nicholas Abbey is a gorgeous plantation. We had a great time walking down the pathways, seeing the old house, and learning about the history of Barbados' economic discovery. The rum is the best.

Small but beautiful with real sense of history. On the day we were there the lady who took the admission fee also provided a really interesting and lively tour.

A very enjoyable couple of hours spent on this beautiful estate towards the north of the Island. A warm welcome from the owners and very friendly service and food from the ladies in the cafe. They will prepare lunch while you look around.

It is the family home, so access to the house is limited, but plenty more to see, including a film from old cine footage, the distillery and gardens. The owner is very keen to chat to visitors and answer any questions.

Included in the price was a rum punch and a rum tasting.

This was a great tour and we really enjoyed it. My favorite part was watching the video about the stable and how they made the wheels for the carriage while sitting in the very stable that was in the video. There was rum tasting and an enjoyable tour of the grounds where you saw items that were used years ago by early barbadians. You were also able to see how the rum is made from the crushing of cane ( only during crop season) to the distillery where the rum was made.This is a must go tour once in the north you will...

We started our tour poorly because it was raining and Google Maps took us down a shorter but unpaved back road, on which we almost got stuck. Luckily we called them and they guided us to the starting point. Note that if Google Maps is taking you on a dirt road a few minutes before you're due to arrive, that's the bad back road and you really shouldn't go that way. Advice to managemrnt: add some signs there to guide visitors the right way.

We started with the short steam train ride, which was enjoyable even though it rained. We then continued with a guided tour of the house. A 20 minute video of the distillery and Barbados followed, which was fun, but we expected a distillery tour, even if short. Then we had the tasting, which was disappointing - only a couple of their cheapest rums and it ended very quickly. We were hoping to buy a few bottles of rum at the end, but they were far too expensive, so we bought none. Advice to management: make it clear that there's no tour of the distillery with this package, just a video. Improve the tasting experience with more variety and taking a bit more time. And do work on those prices a bit - it's better to sell more at a lower price then sell almost nothing at all.

Overall it was a great experience, especially since the guides were engaging and funny, but some tweaks could easily be made to gain...

I visited St Nicholas Abbey as part of a tour of the Abbey and Mount Gay - as a fan of rum! I was hoping to learn more of the history of the Abbey, which as people SHOULD know is built on the enslavement of Black people. I found the entire tour extremely uncomfortable because it was completely whitewashed and I place this responsibility squarely in the hands of the wealthy white owners. We sat and watched a 20 minute film voiced by a rich, white man, showing clips of his father and grandparents visiting Barbados in the 1930s. It captured all the moments of their 'jolly good holiday', but spoke nothing of the history of the plantation. We then did a tour of the house with Michelle, who was kind and welcoming, but who we felt was having to stick to a script and only danced around the subject of slavery and colonisation. And that's not on Michelle, that's on the owners. The rum we tried tasted as sad as the place it's made, and was given to us by the owners son, Simon, who made inappropriate comments to the women in the room. This place is still a glorified slave house and we would NOT recommend visiting. As lovely as the little train ride is, it doesn't make up for the rest of the tour and the whitewashing of history. If you are a white person that enjoyed your visit, you need to take a long hard look...