07-07-2025
How to Have a Relaxed, Festive Vacation With a Baby in Tow
In late May of last year, when Brandon Thomas Brown and Jade Akintola were sitting in the back seat of a rickety jeep driving up a windy road in the hills of the Caribbean island of Bequia — the largest in the Grenadines — with their baby son on Akintola's lap, they asked themselves, 'What have we done?' For the couple, who co-founded the outdoor goods company ITA Leisure, the journey was the last leg of a trip that had started with a flight from New York to St. Vincent, followed by a lengthy car and ferry ride — two legs too many, perhaps, with an infant.
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But then they reached the top of the hill: 'The island kind of opens its mouth, and you see the sand, the town, more greenery,' says Brown, 37. The rest of their week was laid-back and restful. To celebrate Akintola's 35th birthday, the couple and two of their friends spent time cooking, exploring the town of Port Elizabeth and taking more drives through the hills. The property they rented, named Villa Helianthus, after the genus of the sunflower, had a courtyard full of lilies and fruit trees as well as a view of the ocean and neighboring islands. 'You feel so sun-kissed all the time,' says Akintola, now 36, of her time on Bequia. 'There are some places you go to that just feel like God's country.'
It's not the sort of vacation the New York-based couple would have taken a few years ago. Typically, for Akintola's Jade Parades, as she calls her annual birthday celebrations, she's opted for adventure-packed trips; for her 30th, she and 15 friends went to Negril, Jamaica, to snorkel, bar hop and snack on spiked ice cream and extremely hot scotch bonnets. On a trip to the Philippines, Brown, a photographer, traveled to four different cities with a backpack full of cameras. But on Bequia, the pair saw the value in slowing down, to ensure that their then-8-month-old son, Taslim, could fully be a part of the experience. 'Our rah-rah days are over,' says Brown.
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