PRICE:
Frommer's Exceptional

This hotel, originally an unpretentious B&B, is now one of Harbour Island's most glamorous and stylish lodging properties. The forces behind the restoration were two partners, J. Wallace Tutt, an Alabama-born contractor who had designed buildings for clients such as Cher and Versace, and his Canada-born associate Don Purdy, who's responsible for the inn's restaurant. More than any other hotel in The Bahamas, Rock House brings to mind a stylish and trend-conscious hideaway on Miami's South Beach, with a surprisingly posh repeat clientele. Painted a pale yellow, with a white roof that's visible from Harbour Island's ferryboat terminal, the hotel sits on a low bluff above the harbor in the center of the island's only village. The property combines the original 1940s-era B&B with an adjoining site that had functioned for several decades as a Catholic schoolhouse. Each of its nine whimsical accommodations is outfitted with a unique name and decorative style. Examples include the Reef Room, the Palm Room, the Asian Room, the Nautilus Room, the Pineapple Room, and the Parrot Room. Social life centers on the bar and the lavishly landscaped swimming pool, whose edges are lined with the kind of tentlike cabanas that you might expect along the coast of Sardinia.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Bahamas 2009, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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