Hope Town sits at the northern end of Elbow Cay, arranged around a horseshoe harbour that is one of the prettiest anchorages in the Bahamas. The village was founded by loyalists from the American colonies after the Revolution, and the settlement retains a New England tidiness: painted wooden houses with picket fences, flowering bushes, narrow lanes too tight for cars.
Everything is within walking distance — the lighthouse, the small museum, the harbour dock, the handful of restaurants and bars. A golf cart is the usual transport for those staying further along the cay. The population is small year-round, swelling with boaters in winter. It remains quiet enough that evenings on the dock feel genuinely peaceful.