An Awesome 4 Days In Grenada

In the summer of 2026, my wife, teenage son, and I spent 4 days in the awesome island of Grenada in the Caribbean. This small nation is a perfect place for a family looking for some unique experiences among tropical beauty. You can relax on gorgeous beaches, hike tropical mountains, and see and smell some of the best spices and chocolate in the world being grown and produced.

For Grenada – we took a bit more of a relaxed approach than other trips, and didn’t have much planned in advance. We flew to Grenada straight from Barbados after Six Awesome Days In Barbados, and wanted to take things a little slower in Grenada. And we were only here for 3 and a half days, so I am not going to write a typical day by day recap here.

🇬🇩 Grenada Background

Grenada (pronounced greh-NAY-duh) is both an island and a country among the Windward Islands in the eastern Caribbean. The island of Grenada is the main island of the nation, which has a few smaller islands to the north of the island of Grenada. We only visited the island of Grenada so this post is about the main island.

Grenada was a British colony until 1974 when it gained independence. It’s nickname is the Island of Spice because of the production of nutmeg and other spices. Grenada is 21 miles long by 12 miles wide at its widest, and the whole island can be visited in one day. This makes it great for a short vacation among other Caribbean islands. The population is around 117,000. Despite the small size and population, it has a unique culture and it really is different from other Caribbean islands.

Experiences in Grenada

🏨Hotel and beach resort

We stayed all 4 days at La Sagesse Boutique Hotel. Staying here was an absolutely perfect experience for us. It’s a very small hotel along a secluded bay a little over 30 minutes from the main town of St. George’s. If you’re looking for a quiet, affordable, not commercialized or built up spot to stay, with delicious fresh food every day, with a beautiful beach just about to yourself, then this is your spot. We stayed in the Ocean View Family Loft – which has a queen bed in the upper loft with a view of the beach, and two twin beds on the main level. La Sagesse isn’t super upscale luxury, it’s no frills, but has everything you could want or need. Our room was a very short walk to the beach, and the restaurant.

Speaking of the beach… wow. The hotel and restaurant are along the La Sagesse bay with amazing scenery. The ocean was calm most of the time and perfect for relaxing swims or sitting on a chair along the beach. There are plenty of trees if you want to stay in the shade.

We spent one full day, and parts of a few other days, just sitting on the beach and swimming.

Now, some of the serenity of the beach may disappear in late 2026 when the IHG Grenada Resort & Spa opens down the beach from La Sagesse hotel, but even then the beach is big enough, and the resort is a far enough away, that I’m sure La Sagesse hotel will be a great place to stay. The beach is public, and visitors can park in the lot outside of the hotel and walk to the beach – but we didn’t see anyone on the beach the whole time that wasn’t staying at the hotel.

The restaurant at the hotel is fantastic – fresh food every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The fresh fish at lunch or dinner in particular was great. The hotel isn’t all inclusive, and anyone can eat at the restaurant. But coming from the hotel – they had a table for us every evening for dinner right along the edge at the beach, and we could just walk up whenever we wanted for food. With nothing definite planned in Grenada, sitting in the restaurant listening to and watching the waves while we waited for our food to come out was so enojyable.

La Sagesse is a perfect place to stay for a few days to visit Grenada. It itself is enough of a reason to come to Grenada, but there’s a lot more to see too. The price of La Sagesse is almost too good to believe – I still can’t believe how affordable our room was. Rooms at the Six Senses, which is on the other side of the bay, are MANY times more expensive, but I would pick La Sagesse easily over it.

Our last day in Grenada was cloudy with some rain but we didn’t let that deter us. We went out in to the ocean before the rain came for a quick morning swim. After cleaning up and packing, we had an early lunch at the restaurant, watching the choppier than usual waves. The restaurant accommodated us, and had booked our airport taxi, it was so relaxing to not have to plan anything while here!

📸All day Grenada Tour

One of the best ways to see a lot on the island is to book an all day guided island tour. There are several taxi drivers on the island who will take you around to the best sights on the island, tailored to what your interests are. I saw a few listed on Viator, but the best way to do this is to ask your hotel. On our first day here we asked the hotel manager about booking our tour while we were eating breakfast, and they called up their tour guide to book one for us the next day.

The next morning at 9, we met our driver and tour guide, Mr. Boney, in the hotel lobby. He’s been driving a taxi and doing tours around Grenada for many years, and seems to know everyone on the island. He’s been doing tours and taxi driving for guests of La Sagesse for a long time, and it shows – he genuinely cares about hotel guests and does what he can to make sure that you have a great day. All throughout the drive around the island, he shared stories and explained a lot about the places he took us.

We had a few places in mind that we wanted to go, but not enough for a whole day, and Mr. Boney picked some other places to go, including lunch, to give us the best all around tour of Grenada.

🌿Laura’s Herb & Spice Garden

The first stop was Laura’s Herb & Spice Garden. Being the Spice Island, you’ve got to see some of the spices being grown. Laura’s Herb & Spice Garden gives tours through their gardens where they show and explain all of the different spices grown there, and pass around pieces of the herbs and spices for everyone to smell. This was really cool to see and experience – there are so many different spices grown here in such a relatively small area. Our guide did so well at explaining every herb and spice here. The gardens are relatively small so it doesn’t take too long to do the tour – it’s a really interesting place to stop at on an island tour.

💧Annandale Falls

Next stop was Annandale Waterfalls. It’s a beautiful waterfall going in to a lake popular for swims and pictures. You pay an entrance fee and walk down along a paved path to the waterfall, where there is are a few nice platforms for great pictures, and to dive in if you want. And a restaurant/cafe. We didn’t want to get wet, so we stuck to taking pictures. Annandale Falls is good for a quick stop to see nice scenery. I’ve seen some mixed reviews of it online, but I thought it was nice – and the family there diving in while we were there was having a blast.

🏞️Grand Etang National Park

Next up was Grand Etang National Park in the mountainous middle of the island. Mr. Boney drove us to Grand Etang Lake which is the best part to see. This is a lake with some good views of the surrounding mountains at 1,740 feet above sea level. During the dry season, there are some great hikes that go up to the tops of mountains from around here. But being here in July during the wet season, the trails are too muddy.

One of the coolest part of this stop are the mona monkeys here. It’s a popular spot for tours so the monkeys come here for handouts. Mr. Boney bought some bananas along the way to give to the monkeys. Another group tour guide gave them food and the monkeys climbed over the tourists, but Mr. Boney wisely said this is not a good idea for us. Grand Etang was a really cool and quick spot during the tour – there is a road right to the lake where the monkeys are, so there is no walking needed.

🍫Belmont Estate Farm and Restaurant

Next stop, on the northeast side of the island, is lunch at the Belmont Estate. After lunch we’re going to do a tour of the chocolate production here. The restaurant here was delicious, with a nice 3 course lunch, and great views of the island. Some of the food here is from the farm. This is a nice stop and if you’re stopping at Belmont Estate, it’s good to plan the timing for a lunch here.

After lunch, we walked down to the chocolate factory for a tour of Belmont Estate. The tour was really informative, I learned a lot about chocolate production. And we got to see, smell, and touch drying cacao nibs. Belmont Estate, and the chocolate from a few places in Grenada, are not high volume, but are known for some of the best quality in the world. Much of it is shipped to high end chocolatiers around the world. But Belmont Estate produces their own chocolate bars which we got to sample, and buy at the end of the tour, and wow, it’s delicious. Their milk chocolate is the best milk chocolate I think I’ve ever had.

🚗Other drive highlights

One of the best parts of the tour today was seeing so many different parts of the island from the car, and hearing Mr. Boney’s stories. There was so much beautiful scenery throughout the whole drive. Grenada is a very mountainous tropical island, and the roads are almost never straight, especially on this drive as you to through the heart of the island. So coming around every curve was new scenery. Booking a tour with a professional driver is the way to go here. The roads are generally in good condition, but with so many bends and curves, and nothing flat, it would be pretty stressful to drive all day by yourself.

Here are two great shots of very different things I got from the car. First is the remnants of the American invasion of Grenada in 1983 – a bombed Cuban plane at the old airport (Pearls). The Americans damaged this plane so the Cubans couldn’t use it to flee, and it’s been sitting here ever since. There is now a park around the planes. Second picture is overlooking the capital, St. George’s.

Overall this was a fantastic day. Mr. Boney picked us up at 9AM, and dropped us off at the hotel at right around 5PM. We got to see much of the island, and it was a highlight of our vacation to Grenada and Barbados. I definitely recommend doing an island tour if you’re here, and doing a full day one and not a 3 hour tour.

🚤Glass Bottom Boat Ride to Sculpture Garden

We did a really cool adventure – riding a glass bottom boat to the underwater sculpture garden through HotFoot Tours. This is a must do in Grenada as is really unlike any other boat tour/catamaran/snorkeling I’ve done in the past. The boat is pretty small and is entirely clear. You sit on benches on the side, and can look down below the boat, or on the sides, and see everything. There’s a roof overhead for shade. My wife and I wear glasses, and when we’ve snorkeled in the past, things are blurry, so we actually liked this better than snorkeling since we could see a lot more. And you can take all of the pictures and videos you want with your phone!

The destination on this boat ride is the Underwater Sculpture Park – which is around 75 sculptures on the sea floor representing Grenadian culture. They’re anywhere from 16 to 26 feet below the surface, but they look at lot closer than that from the boat. Most of them have pretty interesting stories and the boat crew explain a lot of it as they pilot the boat around them.

There was more to do and see than just seeing the underwater sculpture park from the boat. We were given the opportunity to snorkel, and a few on the boat did, but we chose to stay dry since we could see so much more from the boat. The ride to and from the sculpture park was pretty awesome too – we rode past St. George’s and got to see it from the ocean. The scenery is great along the whole ride.

Other perks of the boat ride are getting to leave right from the pier at Grand Anse beach, and free rum punch! At 2 hours, it’s just the right length, and you get to see so much. This is a must do in Grenada.

🏝️Grand Anse Beach

Speaking of Grand Anse beach… after the boat ride, we walked up and down part of this lovely beach to soak in the scenery. It’s consistently ranked as one of the top beaches in the Caribbean, and we definitely can see why. The sand is fine and powdery, the views are hard to beat, and it’s lined with nice hotels and beach bars. We didn’t get in the water, but it looked like it would be fantastic.

💡Grenada Trip Tips and Impressions

Grenada has a lot to see and do. You can explore the island, relax on beautiful beaches, or both. It’s not as built up with as much big tourist infrastructure as some other Caribbean islands, which makes it great for a stay of several days.

• 🚗You can rent a car, but, I would definitely recommend sticking to taxis and rideshares to get around. The conditions of most roads is fine, and the speeds on roads is generally not too fast. But the roads are very windy, and not flat at all. Combine this danger with driving on the left side that Americans are not used to, and it’s too risky for me. I had no problem at all driving in Barbados, but am glad I didn’t rent a car in Grenada.
• 🚕The best way to get around is to either arrange a ride through your hotel, or use Haylup which is a ride share app like Uber or Lyft for the island. We used Haylup to get to and from Grand Anse beach, and it was reliable. Keep in mind taxis and Haylup are not cheap – getting around the island takes a lot longer than you think it would, and gas is not cheap on the island, so this is reflected in the prices.
  • Be sure to pre-arrange an airport taxi pickup. I arranged this through our hotel before we arrived. The airport is pretty small, and there may not be taxis waiting for passengers. This was especially true for us since we arrived at almost midnight after flight delays.
• 💰Money and cost – Grenada uses the Eastern Caribbean Dollar (XCD), which is fixed to the US dollar – 1 USD is 2.70 XCD. In general things are not cheap here – maybe a little less than Barbados, but still not cheap. Consider that almost everything has to be brought in to the island.
• 💳Cash or card? Many places including taxis do only take cash, or prefer cash, so be sure to have cash handy. Getting cash is harder than it should be – ATMs are not everywhere, and when I did use ATMs I always had to wait in line. And some don’t work – the airport ATM wasn’t working when we got here. However, most places will take US dollars or Eastern Caribbean dollars, so be sure to bring along some US dollars.
• ☀️Temperature – in mid July, the temperatures were usually in the low 80’s, getting up to maybe 86 tops. It is very humid, with dewpoints in the upper 70’s most of the time. Most days were partly to mostly cloudy. I liked the weather here much better than some other Caribbean places I’ve been where it’s 91 degrees all day and the sun is blasting with no clouds.
• 🌧️Rain – we were here during the rainy season, and it did rain some, but not enough to ruin any plans. One of the days it did rain a good amount in the afternoon, but other than that one day, the rain was confined to no more than 10 minutes once or twice a day. I wouldn’t let the “rainy season” in summer affect any planning unless you want to go hiking in the mountains – in which case you need to come in the dry season.
• 🪰Bugs – there were mosquitos at a few places, so bring bug spray. Be sure you have some when you are eating dinner outdoors – that’s when they’re most likely to get you.
• 🍽️Restaurants – We only ate a few meals outside of our hotel’s restaurant, so I can’t really say much about overall quality of restaurants. The food was great everywhere though – especially the La Sagesse restaurant at our hotel.
• 💧Water – Tap water is safe to drink everywhere on the island of Grenada, but from what I read, is not necessarily save on the other islands.
• Language – Barbados was a British colony, and English is spoken by essentially everyone on the island. It was first settled by the French, and a local creole is spoken by a lot of the locals that I couldn’t understand. But everyone will speak English when talking to tourists.