Having been traveling with the kids over the past year and my daughter now in kindergarten, I felt more guilty in taking her out of school to travel. Scheduling vacation around school holidays is very expensive, even if I plan one year in advance, travel companies know those dates 🙁 With 2 free night Hilton certificates due to expire end of the year, I decided to have a weekend getaway to celebrate my birthday without the kids! Their reaction was: “why can’t you take me with you”. I had “you have school” as an excuse hahaha! To maximize the value of the free nights, I had a few expensive Hilton hotels in the Caribbeans on my bucket list and then I searched for availability. Luck has it that the adult-only Hermitage Bay in Antigua has wide availability, that was a rarity! When I booked, it was “only” 150K points per night and over the past 9 months, Hilton has silently devalued from 150K to 190K and now 230K points!!! Consider those rooms often sell for over $2K a night, 230K points = $1150 so almost 50% off but do it actually worth the price tag, let us explore!
In addition, I was able to use my AA miles to cover the flights….at 12K from Boston to Antigua and coming back only 8K in miles plus minor taxes and fees. Cash price would be over $600 roundtrip, those small and not as popular Caribbean island flights are more expensive than going to Europe!!!
Like I said I used 2 free night certificates and then 150K Hilton points to book 3 nights. Hermitage Bay is an all-inclusive resort and they offered free roundtrip transportation on bookings 3 nights or more. Thus, our entire trip was covered with miles and points; what a birthday treat!
The hotel contacted us 2 weeks prior for our flight information and preference. I told them that we’ll be celebrating my birthday 🙂 When I checked the room availability one week prior to see if there’s any chance of getting an upgrade from the beachfront villa to the hillside pool villa, it appeared that hillside pool villa is a “standard room” redemption for 230k points a night! I reached out the hotel if they can change our room type, unfortunately, they said I’ll need to call Hilton to do that and the Hilton rep said she can only cancel and rebook for room type change 🙁 Then, I asked for paid upgrade but the receptionist couldn’t confirm availability until we get to the property.
Our flight arrived on time at 3:30 PM and once we get into the immigration area, I saw the representative from “Signature” contracted by Hermitage Bay…she has the Hermitage Bay sign on her. I met her and she confirmed my name as guest of the property. She asked if I have completed the custom form online to get a QR code which I have. Then, she handed me a blue card to expedite through immigration. She guided me to the front of the line and we were next in line, special expedite service for Hermitage Bay guests! The immigration officer scanned the QR code, asked a few questions to confirm the information and then we off to the customs. Once again, the custom officer scanned the QR code and all set! Once we got through customs, the representative was across the street from the terminal building. She showed us to the Hermitage Bay desk that arranged the driver to take us to the hotel.
The airport terminal looked modern compared to other tropical islands we have been to!
There were 4 pairs/groups of guests arrived on the same flight and each has their own private driver. The whole process took less than 15 min, I like that!We got on the SUV, we were given iced-cold water and on our way to the hotel. The drive was around 45 minutes and the driver was telling us facts about the island. He drove very slow and took us on a detour to avoid the afternoon school traffic. The last 10 minutes were on an un-paved, bumpy road, with tons of potholes! He carefully drive around the potholes very slowly.
Colorful local houses on the way:
We arrived at the hotel at around 4:30 PM…..in time for the 5:30 sushi, I thought. We were greeted by welcoming staff with almond infused cold towel, that felt very good! He walked us over to the sitting area at the pool bar and asked for our passports. I gave him the passports and waited. Another staff came with our welcome drinks….non-alcohol champagne with lime and other flavored juice. I filled out the preference that we don’t drink alcohol so they did deliver on that aspect. Then, another lady came and hand us a form to confirm the info, she asked for our passports…I said I already gave to the other guy. She apologized and then we waited and waited. Lots of waiting and not too sufficiently coordinated in my opinion as multiple people handling multiple check-ins. They should have one dedicated to each pair/group of guest!
Finally, the guy came back and gave us a “tour”, pointing on directions of the breakfast/dinner restaurant, the lunch beach restaurant, and the beach bar where sushi usually held. However, due to the rain the past two days, they moved sushi to the pool bar. I asked if there’s room for the 5:30 PM sushi seating, he said sure he can get us seats. We moved to a bigger table for our sushi.
We were starving by then so glad we made it to sushi, one of the highlight meals according to many reviewers. The sushi chef brought out 3 plates: 1 tuna sashimi, 1 mahi mahi sashimi, and a sushi roll with tuna, avocado, and cucumber. I am not a raw fish person but the sauce was so good, both were sweet base and the fish was not fishy at all! I was able to eat half of each plate, yummy!
After the sushi, we stand up and ready to go. The staff asked ready for your room? Yes! Our beachfront suite was #14. A golf cart came and the staff took us and our luggage to our room. The path to our room from the road was muddy due to the heavy rain past 2 days so we were super lucky with the weather. Our beachfront villa (bungalow) was comfortable and since the hotel renovated all their 32 suites and reopened only a few days ago, the furniture inside the room looked “new”. The bed was comfortable and so as the sofa and chairs.
The bathtub was huge and the only odd thing which a lot of people complained was the open toilet without a door xD We didn’t mind that.
The shower is outdoor which I don’t like due to bugs so I tried showering in the tub instead.
A bug spray was provided in the bathroom due to the amount of mosquitos in the property! I brought my own as well and both worked effectively.
A lookout to our huge deck from the seating area:
The resort provided flip-flops, Jason broke his on the 2nd day so that got him through the trip!
A plate of fruit as welcome gift:
Our villa at night:
Our first night dinner reservation was at 7 PM, the restaurant wasn’t fully booked, and we were the first ones there. We tend to be the first ones at every meal LOL! Immediately after seated, the first thing that we noticed was the loud treefrog noises! I read about those but didn’t expect them to be that loud and high-pitched!!!! They didn’t have live music that night so those treefrog noises were another kind of live music 😉
Tonight’s theme was Caribbean night so the dishes were more local. They have a small section of non-alcoholic drinks. I saw honeydew melon with almond milk smoothie and honey, that sounded refreshing so we ordered that. It turned out great! Refreshing and not too sweet!
For appetizers, they automatically included the 4 dishes: local cole slaw, caramelized plantain ceviche, crab bits, and grilled beef kebab. The cole slaw was okay, nothing special. The caramelized plantain was good although I am not a fan of ceviche due to the sourness. The crab bits was too salty! The beef kebab was good.
For the main courses, I ordered multiples because I know their portions are small as with all fine-dining. I ordered the shrimp skewer and the jerk chicken with mac-n-cheese and potato salad as sides. It turned out that the shrimp skewer is only one! The shrimp skewer were super salty, I had one of the shrimps! The jerk chicken was much better, the meat was juicy, tender, and flavorful. The sides were okay.
Jason ordered the pan seared grouper and shrimp skewer. The grouper was great and the shrimp skewer was too salty as well. He only ordered the grilled corn as side.
In between appetizer and main course and dessert, it took a long time…..they were running on Caribbean time for sure! We finally got to our dessert – molten lava cake and coconut & passion fruit panna cotta. Both were great!
7 PM dinner took 1.5 hours so by the time we got back to our room, it was 8:30 PM. Shower, rest, and sleep 🙂 The treefrog noises weren’t as bad inside our room with the AC running. We were so tired that we had no trouble with falling asleep with those noises. For light sleepers, you definitely need earplugs!
The uninterrupted 7 hours of sleep felt so good! I woke up and so confused by my phone’s time, it kept changing one hour ahead and back. I had to Google “Antigua” time now to find out the local time. Antigua is on the Atlantic time zone and does not observe day light saving. We were there in October so their time is the same as Eastern time zone. Speaking of that, the wifi signal is so bad in the hotel that it keep dropping. My phone’s battery drained so fast because of that and T-Mobile is confused with Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
I opened the curtain and I saw the shades of blue of the Caribbean Sea, the view was nice! We got ready and headed out for breakfast which started at 7:30 AM and we were the first ones there. We are early birds so no way we can sleep past 8 AM even without alarm. For breakfast, we got a basket of pastries and a fruit plate, the same as the welcome fruit plate in our room. The juice of the day is a lime, ginger, and cucumber…it tasted weird. We were given a minibar restock form to fill out anything we want to refill. We checked off the snack and that was it.
The croissant was not as crunchy nor chewy as the ones we had in France, I miss those croissants so much! From the menu, I ordered “The Bay Wrap” with a side of sausage and Jason ordered the wrap plus the omelet with a side of avocado. Jason felt sometime bite him, OMG, he already got a few mosquitos/bug bites! He ran back to our room to spray inspect repellent. I read that the mosquito situation is really bad at Hermitage Bay so we were prepared and bring our own inspect repellent; they also have a bottle in the room with 15% deet. I was expecting to spray for sushi and dinner, I didn’t expect that we need also to spray during the day! I didn’t get any bite, thanks to Jason!
The cats were waiting for their breakfast. The sausage rolled off the plate when the waitress was putting the dish on the table! The cat got the sausage in no time and ran away to enjoy it 😀
The wrap was very good; the eggs were fried perfectly! The avocado was good but the sausage was just okay, nothing special. Overall, breakfast was wonderful to start the day.
After breakfast, we made our sushi seating and dinner time reservation with the host and then walked back to our suite to wait for the sun to be at higher angle for the best color of the water for photos. First, we took photos on our deck, it was huge with lots of outdoor furniture. The swing bed was cute but it was not completely dry.
I put the camera on the rail of the deck and that was how we managed to get a photo of us 😀
On the back of our deck, there is a garden villa tucked in; I was glad that I was able to redeem the beach villa with points instead of that.
We walked out from our deck to the beach, part of it was rocky and full of shells, the lower part was soft sand (but not powdery sand as in the Bahamas or Cayman Islands). There was no one walking on the beach except us and another guy sunbathing. No photoshop needed 🙂 It was partly cloud so we had to wait for a long time for the cloud to pass to fully light up the mountain on the background. The beach has some sargassum seaweed washed up:
The lower part of the beach looked more clean so the angle made a difference 😉
From one end of the beach to another end, it was less than hmmm 5 minutes of walk so it wasn’t big. With only 32 suites and not everyone hang out at the beach, the beach was empty most of the time! Since we were there during the weekend, we saw locals on the other end of the beach near the watersport area. We walked to the other end of the beach with those red rocks.
We “hiked” up there for a higher view of the beach. There was a sign for the hiking trail but we didn’t think it’ll offer better views.
Not only we need to wait for the cloud to pass, we also need to wait for the winds! Without the winds, it was hot (not burning hot, in the 80s) and humid. Jason broke his flip-flop on those uneven rocks urg! Thankfully, the hotel provided flip-flops so it came handy this time!
Those were the two photographic spots around the hotel. The scenery wasn’t as amazing as Bora Bora, the colors of the water weren’t as spectacular as Bora Bora, Maldives, or Aitutaki so set the expectation correctly 😉 Caribbean-wise, their beach wasn’t powdery soft as Aruba or Grand Caymans but the mountains as the backdrop is picturesque.
Time flies and it was time for lunch, we sprayed bug spray before heading to the beach restaurant. There is a wooden boat structure next to the beach restaurant where they have a grill to make dishes on certain days of the week:
The beach restaurant is open air:
The lunch menu is the same every day except for the today’s special section and lobster is extra charge now, that’s the downside so 3 nights were enough. For the drinks, they don’t have fresh coconut water, the waiter said no one climb to get coconut since it was rainy the past 2 days! We ordered the virgin pina colada instead and it was good!
Tables and sunsets in front of the beach restaurant:
The beach restaurant menu:
We ordered shrimp tacos and the shrimp and avocado. The shrimp tacos were crispy and good while the shrimp and avocado was too sour for my liking.
Food + view = paradise 🙂
For main course, I ordered the calamarata frutti di mare (seafood pasta). It was creamy sauce based so not my favorite but it tasted good nevertheless. It has a huge scallop and some shrimps, calamari, and mussels. For the side, I ordered the truffle sweet potato fries, highly recommended by reviewers! I totally agree with that, it was great!
Jason had the steak and also the sweet potato fries, it was cooked perfectly and the right amount of sea salt. Why couldn’t the chef in Bora Bora cook steak right?
At the end of the resort, after the beach restaurant, is the watersports “center” where you can use those non-motorized equipments for free:
By the time we finished with lunch, it was already 1:15 PM! We walked over to the reception desk and asked if there are any nice views up on the hill. The receptionist said yes, up there, we could see the other side of the bay. She called a golfcart and the staff took us up. It was the highest point he could drive up and the view was just so-so. It was cloudy when we go up so the water color wasn’t the best. He waited for us to take a few snaps and drove us back down. We didn’t want to walk the 100s of steps down especially it was humid.
There are a lot of trees blocked the views so not all hilltop villas are created equal! If you splurge on upgrading to a hilltop villa, make sure you get the villa with unobstructed views! To get the best colorful photos, the timing was from 11 AM to 2 PM!
After we got back down to the reception, we walked around the resort to take more photos. The lobby has sofas across from the reception desks:
Next to the lobby is the swimming pool and bar with swing chairs; this was where we had sushi the night before:
The pool is quite a distance from the beach so not much guests in the pool during the days we were there:
The beach bar where sushi was served (except when it rains):
There are boardwalk path from the beach villas to the beach bar, pool, and reception:
We walked back to our villa:
Behind our villa on top of the hill are the hilltop villas, they are still building and adding more:
The swing bed in our deck was still damp so I gave up on the idea of hanging out there. The AC inside the room was much more comfortable 🙂
At 4:30 PM, we walked out to the beach bar for the sushi tasting. Today’s dishes were more on the sour sauce so I didn’t eat as much as yesterday. I had the honey dew melon with almond drink, that was my go-to drink at sushi 😀
Between sushi and dinner, it was my time to video chat with the kids since after dinner would be too late for them. They did count down on how many days left before I get home xD
At around 5:45 PM, it was sunset time and today’s sunset was quite bright in orange colors!!!
We made sure we spray thoroughly before heading out for dinner at 7 PM. We chose to sit in the most upper row this time for less bugs. The bugs were attracted by the hanging lamps instead of the LED light on the table so not as bad as yesterday. Tonight’s theme is “seafood”, yay for Jason! For starters, we both ordered the seafood soup and it was tasty with lobster meat! The cats could smell the seafood and one on each side of me waiting for me to feed them….sorry no fish for you 😛
For the main course, I ordered the roasted duck breast and the blackened scallops with the house seasonal salad as a side instead of a starter. For drink, I ordered the virgin passionate daiquiri and asked if they can make it without the lime juice since I don’t like too sour drink. I ended up with a virgin mojito instead…urg! It was sweet so they definitely didn’t put any lime juice in it.
The duck breast was cooked right just medium and the berry sauce was a good match. The scallops were surprisingly huge and perfect with the sauce!
Jason ordered the seabass, scallops, and the grilled angus tenderloin. The seabass was very good, even I could eat it, not fishy. The steak was definitely good quality but Jason preferred ribeye or a little bit more fatty type. For the drink, he ordered the virgin pina colada and it was better than the ones we had in lunch.
For dessert, I got the “deconstructed tiramisu”, it was not what I think it will look like LOL. But there was ladyfingers, coffee jelly, cream, and berries. The cream wasn’t mascarpone cheese! I have high standards for anything tiramisu 😛 The bottom cream was too sweet, more like a caramel sauce, it would be better if something light.
We both enjoyed the seafood dinner, so far so good on all the meals we had so far!
We got into the relaxing rhythm and woke up at 8 AM the next day, I was surprised! Another interrupted 8 hours of sleep 😀 We weren’t the first ones to breakfast this morning! It was much windier than yesterday!
The juice of the day is beetroot with ginger urg that doesn’t sound delicious so we passed on that. We didn’t even get the pastry basket; we didn’t want to waste food. Also, instead of the fruit plate, I asked if we could just have watermelon, that was a better choice 😉 Like yesterday, I ordered The Bay Wrap and a side of avocado plus the pancakes. The pancakes were a disappointment, not fluffy, I could make better ones 😛
We had a late breakfast today so when we finished it was 9:30 AM! We walked back and saw ladies on the beach picking sea shells. We went on sea shell hunting too, just a few to bring back to our daughter, she loves little things for her arts and crafts!
We didn’t have anything planned for today so we just relax in the room with music. The bluetooth speaker in the room was pretty good in sound quality.
We checked out the giftshop before lunch and it was mostly cloths and jewelry, nothing stand out and the price is outrageously as you would expect from a hotel boutique! A swim short cost $300 and a scarf cost $120!!! No other interesting souvenir…I was thinking to use my $50 quarterly AMEX Hilton credit. A Hermitage Bay logo hat cost $40 LOL and doesn’t look anything special!
We gave up on the idea and walked to have lunch. They were grilling today!
However, it was so windy that sometimes it blow up the sand and our plate has a thin layer of sand! We ordered the virgin pina colada and waited a while for our food order to be taken. I ordered the same pasta dish as yesterday but ask if they could change it to a tomato-based sauce and spaghetti. Jason ordered the steak again, shrimp tacos, and the truffle sweet potato fries. Once we placed the order, we walked out to take some photos.
When we got back from photos, there was a glass of white wine in our table….what??? The waitress said we could have it….she clearly doesn’t remember that we don’t drink alcohol! We waited so long for our food, she came to apologized once, it’s okay, we are not hungry or in a rush. The food finally came and they delivered my special request pasta 🙂 It was better than yesterday’s!
Thankfully, the wind didn’t blow sand during our meal so no sand in our food! The waitress came over and offered Jason another pina colada…I have no idea why they make extras. Unfortunately, it has alcohol in it, our fault for not asking first!
We finished lunch at around 2 and then a sudden downpour….no rush, we are on vacation! We hang out in our room the rest of the afternoon till sushi time. We headed out for sushi and took a photo of us in that swingbed, we put beach towels on top so we did not get wet:
The first course of sushi was a tuna with papaya, avocado, and lime juice. Again, not my favorite when the sauce is sour. The second course was tuna sashimi with basil, sesame, and rice crackers. The combination was interesting and tasted okay. And lastly the third course was the California rolls with spicy mayo sauce and tuna sushi with truffle sauce. I think this was our first time having sushi with truffle, the taste with soy sauce was good. I think our first sushi when we arrived was the best, I like the sweet sauce base!
The dinner menu for tonight (my birthday dinner); it was very similar to the menu last night!
I didn’t dare to try out a new drink this time to be safe, we both ordered the virgin pina colada. We ordered the seafood soup as appetizer, it was the same as last night and tasted great:
The shrimp and mahi fritters were too salty:
For our main course, Jason ordered the Chilean seabass and the lamb shank:
I ordered the marinated baby chicken and the ginger teriyaki vegetables with rice, both were so salty! What a disappointment for my birthday dinner 🙁
I wished they have the scallops from yesterday! For dessert which we waited for a long time for our waitress to take our order, I picked the matcha cheesecake from the “daily special” and it was good!
There’s also a separate/regular dessert menu:
I ordered the creme brulee to try that out too, it was good (not as good as the ones I make :P):
At the end of the night, there was no recognition/special for my birthday even though I filled out the pre-arrival email that we are celebrating my birthday! For a luxury resort like this, I would expect that they take those details seriously!
The next morning, we had breakfast and ordered lunch to go as our departure time was 11 AM so not enough time to enjoy lunch. We both ordered the HB burger and truffle sweet potato fries. The staff was cleaning up the beach after the windy day yesterday and it looked so much cleaner!
After the checkout with $0 balance, I walked over to the breakfast/dinner restaurant to check on our take-out lunch. It took them an extra 10 minutes, not sure if they forgot or what! We got our take-out and the driver was there waiting for us to take us to the airport. Goodbye Hermitage Bay, goodbye Antigua!
Overall, our quick 3-nights stay was very good! Food was above the notch for an all-inclusive made with fresh ingredients. Staffs were friendly and never say no to customize orders but slow. Each meal took a long time because of the wait. The resort property was beautiful but small so 3-nights was a lot to stay in one place. Their beach was okay, nice but not paradise beautiful and not powdery sand. However, if you like seashells, that’s the beach for you! Do I recommend Hermitage Bay? Yes with Hilton points! Will I come back again? Probably not, however, if they allow kids, we will take our kids for a visit!
