Vitamin Sea: Atlantis Coral Tower

I grew up with fins for feet. Whether I learned to walk or swim first, is probably not even arguable, it was swimming.  My family was constantly on the boat spending weekends in the Keys and summers in the Bahamas. Some of the most beautiful things I have ever seen have been in the Bahamas where the cruises can’t roam and the planes can’t land.

Bahamas and the Bahamian people hold a large piece of my heart. Naturally, I had to share this piece of my heart with Seth and the girls. So we went to Atlantis and stayed at The Coral Tower.

There’s no clever way to describe it, I’m still blown away by how HUGE and spacey our room was. HUGE, SPACEY, and CLEAN. I can’t even explain to you all how much of a nut job I am when it comes to hotel cleanliness. I wear sandals in the room INCLUDING in the showers, examine every inch of a towel before I use it, and check the sheets for debris. I even bring my own blanket so I don’t have to use the hotel’s. That being said, I casually walked around barefoot at the Coral Tower.

They were so quick to clean our room, and I’m sure they cleaned it twice a day, which is nuts because the room was the size of all of the bedrooms in your house put together (I exaggerate but really, it’s spacey.) To put things into perspective, when you back from the beach at the end of the day you find clean beds, clean floors, and fresh towels. Then you shower, drop your beach towels, and leave to dinner. When you come back from dinner the dirty towels are gone with fresh towels in their place, the sink is wiped clean, the counters and floors are clean and dry, the sheets are straightened again, and the sand on the floor that you tracked in from the beach, GONE. I walked around that hotel barefoot and wrapped myself up in their towels and bedding like a pig in a blanket.

Working our way to the pools, there are so many at Atlantis. ELEVEN HUGE POOLS, some with water slides, waterfalls, or splash pads and obstacle courses. The pool at The Coral Tower may have been my favorite to relax in because I COULD relax. There was a kiddie pool zero-entry for Kate which was about less than a foot deep so she could swim and lounge without hanging on my hip, safely (PS. Vacation Kate is the BEST Kate there is.) There was also a bar with in-pool seating which Isabella loved swimming up to for her daily daiquiri.

There’s also so much to see just walking to the pools. Aquariums and ponds of fish, lobster, sting rays, turtles, piranhas, and probably other creatures I don’t even know the names of but there they were in all their glory.

Altantis does a wonderful job making sure adults and children are having an incredibly fun and relaxing time in a safe environment. There are splash pads and waterfall pools, complimentary life vests, and water toys for play and purchase. There are also slides that take you through shark tanks and lazy rivers that take you through slides.

If you have not been to a beach in the Bahamas, you have not been to a beach. The water is crystal clear and the sand is perfect, smooth, and sans rocks which is incredible. Why no rocks? Those waves on your sound machine – recorded in the Bahamas. The constant crashing of the waves have broken up the rocks into fine pieces of magical sand like in the pack you buy at Brookstone. So the sand is soft and the fish are FRIENDLY, but of course they are friendly, they are Bahamian fish. Pro Tip: Bring beef jerky to feed the fish while you swim. It will not break apart in the water and they will eat it straight from your hand. If you don’t believe me, check out our Instagram highlights.

If the hotel, aquariums, ponds, pools, slides, lazy rivers, casino, splash pads, good food, and beach aren’t enough for you, the hotel also has a wide range of shopping available, excursions they can set you up with (I cannot recommend the Fast Ferry to Harbour Island and Pink Sands Beach enough), and Dolphin Cay. I will post more on Dolphin Cay later because it really deserves its own post but I’ll just say that our dolphin is family now. I’ll also add that the resident dolphins at Dolphin Cay are rescues from Hurricane Katrina and they are cared for so greatly that their life expectancy is YEARS higher than the average wild dolphin.

And because Isabella can never get enough of wildlife, we took advantage of the Sea Squirts program and watched Isabella feed sharks, stingrays, and turtles.

The people in the Bahamas just seem to understand life. Life should be enjoyed, not just endured. Atlantis is built on a respect for life, people, and nature and truly harbors the colorfulness of it all. We may no longer be in the Bahamas, but we are Bahamas at heart.