If Antiguan days passed in film noir black and white, you might miss out on the sky-blue bays and pastel cottages on this largest of the British Leeward isles, but you’d swear you had dropped back to the nostalgic days of the old Caribbean. Blink once and you can almost hear Harvard yachties draped in rumpled oxfords swapping nautical tales with wrinkled fishermen whose great-great grandfathers watched Admiral Horatio Nelson’s men-of-war stalk pirates along the coast.

Shades of gray aside, nowhere is the wistful sense of days-gone-by stronger than in the rustic Long Bay Hotel, an island institution that feels more like a family-run maritime inn than a modern beach resort. And, as we quickly discovered when a flight delay postponed our evening arrival, the Long Bay Hotel shares a bit of both.

“We saved two plates for you,” Chris Lafaurie said as he greeted us after a long day of traveling. Chris, the manager, grew up at the hotel that his family has run since 1966. If he’s not sharing local stories with guests at the Beach House or in the bar, he’s perched on his balcony above the hotel surveying a corner of the Caribbean that has changed little in the last four decades.

The Long Bay Hotel sits abroad a spit of land on the northeastern coast of Antigua at once sheltering a shallow lagoon and fronting a pristine beach. Pristine means pristine here. The bay itself has been designated as a national park and abuts two other national parks, Indian Town and Devil’s Bridge.

Nostalgic and charming are two words often tossed about in the hospitality industry as a nice way of saying “past its prime.” Long Bay Hotel is nostalgic and charming, but in a timeless way. The 20 rooms and five cottages spread over 10 acres of gardens are all original construction. There are no modern add-ons that sometimes make rooms look lost between two worlds. The air conditioning is the same as it has always been, soft trade winds carry the scent of Flamboyant trees through louvered windows. The airy rooms, built of limestone and island timber, are decorated with simple cane furniture and colorful drapes. Elegant touches, like fresh flowers in the corner, made me smile.

“If you need a phone, we have one at the front desk,” Chris told us when he showed us to our room. “And no televisions either.” Instead of electronic entertainment, Chris explained, the hotel prided itself in classic fun. “The library has over 1,000 titles in it; we have about every board game you could ever want, and there’s table tennis and an outdoor court if you brought shoes and a racquet.”

Instead of feeling like our room was a self-contained island, Thom and I found ourselves becoming a part of the local atmosphere. Chris arranged for his favorite cabbie, Kenneth-a vocal dead ringer for Morgan Freeman complete with gentle mannerisms and senior wisdom-to tour us around the island. Passionate about his home, Kenneth glided 15 mph under the speed limit through villages and along back roads, pointing out unique plants, Eric Clapton’s rehabilitation clinic, the ruins of sugar plantations and the busy dock that was once the gateway to Britain’s most powerful naval port in the Caribbean. Punctuating every discourse were the enthusiastic greetings of “OKAY!” volleyed between Kenneth and his passing friends.

Back at the hotel, we explored the Long Bay Beach, a marvelous stretch of white sand so fine that Thom and I barely had to brush off our feet when heading back to the Turtle Restaurant for dinner. The restaurant, like the hotel, is a blend of Caribbean flavor and European flair with dishes drawing heavily on local lobster and fish, but also spiced with New Zealand lamb and American beef.

On the second day, after a sunny morning trolling for barracuda and snorkeling off Captain Dave’s 12-foot launch, we headed in for a light lunch of Antiguan toast on the terrace at the Beach House. Ambitions for sea kayaking, tennis and snorkeling began to fade as we sipped a chilled Beaujolais and fell into the rhythm of island time. Gazing out at the beach where local kids dove for spiny lobsters in the calm waters, I realized that our son Wesley, once he got over the shock of no video games, would come to love the outdoor adventure of the Long Bay Hotel. Chris confirmed my suspicion. “We don’t really market the hotel as a family destination, but the children who do come love it here.”

The night before we left, I was already missing the island feel. We had found a slice of authentic Caribbean life without paying $1,000 a night. Thom and I wandered down to the bar, where Antigua’s answer to Casablanca-Sam the bartender, who has been at Long Bay since the 60s-had regularly charmed us with his inventive tropical fruit and rum concoctions. But it was late. Sam rested his head on his arms, sound asleep at the bar.

There would be no wistful request of “play it again, Sam,” tonight. That would have to wait for our next visit. Instead, we turned quietly and walked on the path back to our cottage, enjoying a chorus of tree frogs singing to the stars.