"One hour in Barbados" a Barbados Travel Page by Airpunk

Barbados is the first and only state I added to my VT map, although I do not consider to have visited it. I just spent and hour there, but that one was enough to say something about it. I am not going to speak about the cultural heritage of this country, but about an odyssey through the small airport of Bridgetown, Barbados.

At first, I had two hours to change planes in Barbados which was reduced to a single one after my flight has departed Heathrow with a delay of one hour. But instead of being allowed to go through the gate which says “Conneting flights”, I was forced to stand in queue for immigration. A lady from immigration authorities checking the immigration forms told me to come forward to a special counter to speed up my immigration procedure. That saved a couple of minutes, which I lost again at the check.in counter. Although I was told that my bag has been checked through, it wasn’t. The reason: There’s no weight stated on the baggage tag (for more details about that, please read my tip: “Is your baggage really checked through?”). That meant, I had to go back to the baggage reclaim area and find my bag. After watching the carousel run for 10 minutes with my bag still not coming, I asked someone at the lost and found counter who showed me a pile of bags standing a couple of meters away from the carousel. After having found it there, I went back to the check-in counter which wasn’t that easy now. I left my customs part of the immigration form when I left the baggage reclaim area first, so I had none left. Some discussions later, I was allowed to leave and wnet back to the check-in desk, dropped the bag and ran to emigrations. Yes, I forgot to fill out some parts of the form and there I was hurrying up completeing this piece of paper knowing that boarding has surely started by now. Now through security (did you know that lighters aren’t allowed at all in Barbados – not even a single one in a jacket pocket?) and to the gate. But: There are no boards indicating the gate for your flight and even airline logos were hard to find. Don’t ask me how, I found my flight which was almost fully boarded…. Goodbye Barbados – I hope to see you again under better circumstances.