My request to extend my visa in Barbados got rejected. The Barbadian Immigration Authority felt I didn’t have a good enough reason to extend my… Read More »Leaving Barbados; My Quest For Dual Citizenship Continues
You’ve made it to the rum paradise and like thousands of tourists you don’t want to leave. The next step for you is to extend… Read More »How to Apply for a Visa Extension in Barbados 2020 (Avoid these 3 Mistakes I Made)
In my previous post, I told you guys how I was given a 1 month visa upon arrival in Barbados instead of 6 months by… Read More »Week 3; Tourist Visa Extension Barbados 2020
If you’ve been following my posts, you already know why I decided to move to Barbados and if you haven’t, here’s a little recap. Because… Read More »Lawyers Office; Immigrating to Barbados
Before visiting Barbados, I wasn’t really worried about how safe the island would be and how freely I could move around as a tourist considering… Read More »How Safe is Barbados? 2020
Fruit vendor sign at the Ministry of Agriculture market
In Barbados, i’ve noticed a couple of signs, names of restaurants, or street signs that I found pretty funny. Here are the ones I managed to take a picture of, for your viewing pleasure….
On board a private operated bus heading to Bridgetown
Prior to my trip to Barbados, my plan was to stay for a long time, therefore I didn’t arrive in “tourist mode”, I came with a plan to live like the ordinary Bajan, keeping costs as low as possible so my money could go a long way. For starters, my Airbnb at St. Philip for the first two weeks cost US$30 a night (the cheapest I could find), I didn’t rent a car (which cost around US$75 a day during peak season without full insurance as I was told upon inquiry, insane!) and so I took the bus around town. I didn’t visit any “shmancy fancy” restaurants just yet or take the usual rum punch tours and sea adventures most tourists indulge in. Based on this, in this post, I will be writing about low-budget transportation around Barbados, how to get around like the average Barbadian without a car and on a budget.
For the first two weeks, I visited Bridgetown by taking the bus from St. Philip to B-Town and unlike in Israel where you have a small screen by the bus-stop showing you the arrival time of the bus which always comes on time, in Barbados you just get to the bus station and wait until a bus shows up and wait times could range from 5-50mins. Crazy!…
Read More »Week 2; Low-Budget Transportation in Barbados
Cathedral Church of Saint Michael and all Angels Bridgetown
Anyone who has visited Barbados can testify to her sun-kissed beauty. For me, after months of non-stop researching and deciding on Barbados as the country I wanted to move to and at some point hopefully attain dual citizenship, I was finally here and I joined the Barbados lovers bandwagon.
Her turquoise blue waters laced with white sandy beaches, coconut trees that tower into the sky giving it a picturesque view, rocky east coast with high tide waves that splash back and forth with full force, eroding rocks that have stood firm for thousands of years on this island. Sugar cane plantations sprawled across the island remind you of the rich history that gave birth to the Bajan people and a culture founded on rum. Some call it paradise, others come and never want to leave…
Read More »Week 1 in Barbados
After spending 3 spectacular months in the “Holy Land”, it was time for my trip to Barbados (you can view my previous post here). For this trip, I booked a 6 months return ticket with Lufthansa at $1,180 per passenger which was a steal considering it was peak season. As explained in my previous post, I had no plans to use my return ticket so I didn’t know what to expect at immigration and this made me anxious for my trip but there was no turning back now! The flight route was TLV to FRA to BGI , my connecting flight was with Euro-wings and total flight time was 16hrs 30mins including layover. I found it pretty cool that there were direct flights to Bridgetown from Frankfurt albeit a long one.
My flight was for 5:20am Israeli time and at 1:00am I left for the airport to start my journey. During check-in at the airport, Lufthansa made us (my husband and I) check in our hand luggages and we were only allowed to take our laptop bags with us on the plane. I found this completely ridiculous as it was not the start to my trip I had planned. However, the TLV to FRA flight was a breeze, 4hrs and we reached Frankfurt, layover time was 3hrs and after the usual security checks, we waited in the transit area to board the plane. While waiting, I connected to the airport wifi to surf the net and the Ukrainian airlines plane crash that killed 176 people in Iran was plastered all over the news as we were about to board our plane, the sad news made me even more anxious but I had to shake it off. 30mins later, we boarded Euro-wings heading to Barbados for a 9hr 20mins flight phew!
I decided to move to Barbados and in case you’re wondering why, here’s a little story about my situation. I’m a Nigerian meaning; of the 190 countries in the world I can only visit 45 countries visa free or by attaining visa on arrival, 34 of those being African countries. Therefore, I need a visa to visit almost all the countries that make up the first world. Crazy right? Basically, my passport sucks, and i’m sick and tired of spending half my life at embassies chasing visas.
After much research on how to get another citizenship and seeing as i’m not a millionaire or anywhere near rich and cannot afford to attain citizenship by investment for countries like St. Lucia, Grenada, Malta, Montenegro, I had to think outside the usual box.
Acknowledging my unique situation, I realised I had to take the long way around this and tic tac toc, I came to the conclusion that I would like to become a Barbadian citizen…
