Port Royal sits at the end of the Palisadoes spit, the long sand bar that encloses Kingston Harbour, reachable by a 20-minute ferry from the Ocean Boulevard terminal in Downtown Kingston. For history, it is one of the most significant sites in the Caribbean — a former pirate base, naval headquarters, and earthquake survivor that has been quietly decaying and slowly excavated for decades.
The town today is small and quiet, a fishing community with a few rum bars and a fish fry strip popular on weekends. The fort — Fort Charles — is well preserved and houses a small maritime museum with exhibits on Port Royal's 17th-century heyday and the 1692 earthquake. The ferry connection makes this an easy half-day from Kingston: take the morning ferry, walk the fort and the old streets, eat fish at one of the open-air restaurants by the waterfront, and return on the afternoon boat.