Known as the happiest island in the Caribbean, Jamaica is world-famous for much of what we take for granted today, like Bob Marley and jerk seasoning. Oh, and Ian Fleming made a villa at Goldeneye his home for two months every year from 1946 until his death and wrote most of his James Bond spy novels there.
Other claims to fame are Sandals, the Caribbean’s first all-inclusive resort; the use of the friendly expression “ya mon” (which means okay or no problem); and the island’s ubiquitous street foods. Two popular street foods are patties, a thin flakey crust of dough filled with spicy meat or vegetables, and baked pudding, made with either bread fruit or cornmeal.
Mother’s in Kingston is THE island go-to for patties, while Puddin' Man, proprietor of the Just Coool Green Grocery and Variety Store near St. Ann’s Bay, makes the best puddings.
I stayed at the intriguing Round Hill Hotel and Villas in Montego Bay. A small hotel known for its privacy has made it a haven for the glitterati and Hollywood A-listers since the day it opened in 1953. Sir Noël Coward, Adele Astaire (wife of Fred), Bill and Babe Paley, and J.F. Kennedy all stayed there, followed by Ralph Lauren, Paul McCartney, and Ryan Gosling, and more recently Lupita Amondi Nyong'o.
Coward loved Jamaica and had a vacation home there, Firefly Estate, where he hosted the likes of Queen Elizabeth II, Sir Winston Churchill, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and Sophia Loren. He is buried at the estate, and his house has been transformed into a writer’s home museum. Errol Flynn also had an estate on the island, and a nearby marina is named after him.
Round Hill was the perfect starting point to discover—along with a definitive history lesson given by the hotel’s loquacious managing drector—the island that gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1962, but is still a Commonwealth country recognizing Queen Elizabeth as the Queen of Jamaica.
