Friends and I went to see the new Julia Roberts movie Duplicity last night. The movie opens with an aerial view of the Dubai coastline - followed by the exact terraced shot above. DUBAI read the bright white text over the image.

I jerked in my seat. "What!" I hissed involuntarily. "That's not Dubai!"

For the purposes of our characters it was, but I knew instantly this was most definitely a view of The Cloisters on Paradise Island, in the Bahamas. I cannot describe the disorienting feeling of seeing not just a place I know in a movie, but an exact image of a location as carefully composed in a photograph I have taken myself. They only showed it for the briefest of moments before cutting to lovely close-ups of Julia and Clive Owen, and for a minute I thought I was going crazy. To me, it was so clearly the Bahamas and not Dubai that I couldn't imagine how the filmmakers expected anyone to believe it. Maybe I was wrong; maybe I hadn't seen it properly; maybe Dubai has a spot with the exact same landscaping. But I knew, I knew what that shot was, and so I floundered silently in my seat for probably the first ten minutes of the movie.

Clive and Julia later visit the casino in Atlantis, however - a place I am also personally acquainted with, on many occasions - and that sealed the deal for me. They were most definitely truly at Atlantis, and the Cloisters? Are literally up the road. It's an easy hike, one I have walked myself. It's so clear that they brought cast & crew to Paradise Island, shot their scenes at Atlantis, then strolled over to the Ocean Club (upon which land the Cloisters adjoin) and were like, "Okay, now we're in Dubai!" Ha, I love little insights into filmmaking like that.

Of course most people are not going to be familiar enough with the Cloisters to notice like I did, and anyway that's all just movie magic. But they really are quite famous, at least in the Bahamas, and absolutely worth seeing. The Cloisters themselves are the remains of a 14th-century French Augustinian monastery dismantled and brought to Florida by William Randolph Hearst in the 1920s. Huntington Hartford, the billionaire who transformed little-known Hog Island into Paradise Island in the early 1960s, bought the stones and re-assembled them on the island. As I recall from my visit to the Cloisters three years ago, a plaque notes that they were a gift for his wife. Hartford built (among other Paradise Island landmarks) Hurricane Hole Marina and the Ocean Club. The Cloisters sit on a high point that slopes gently down all the way to the Ocean Club's swimming pool, where Clive and Julia's banter first sparks their romance. It's very, very beautiful, and the grounds are entirely open to visitors - the Cloisters themselves are on public property, and I believe anyone can wander the Ocean Club's gardens.

The north face of the Cloisters is nearly bare, but the south face looking toward Nassau Harbour and the city is covered in rich green ivy. The ground also slopes away to the south, leading to a lovely stone gazebo. From the harbor, the grounds are actually very difficult to see; they narrow and end in thick vegetation. Whenever we passed through Nassau Harbour on our boat, my family almost always anchored near the Cloisters - it's an excellent, quiet spot, well-protected from heavy shipping traffic. We always anchored off the one barren lot in perhaps all of Paradise Island, a steep hill thick with trees and dead vegetation, separated from the grand estates on either side by chainlink fences. A path wound up next to the fence from the tiny beach, though, and although it was a bit of a mad scramble it was the easiest way to get ashore. Much better than taking the dinghy all the way through the choppy harbor to the public docks. From the hill the Cloisters were a block east, and Atlantis only a few blocks northwest.

There was a time when we would visit Atlantis and its marvelous aquariums by taking the dinghy through a narrow canal in the shadow of the bridge - I can remember when Nassau Harbour had only one bridge spanning it; the second was built merely 10 years ago - that led into a quiet, sheltered pond lined with shops and restaurants. We would tie up at one of the restaurants' docks and there was the main (and original) building of Atlantis, just across the street - a luxury hotel, but still just a hotel. Not a mega complex. Everything was much quieter then: far fewer people and traffic and celebrities. After we were done with Atlantis we would wander across the breakwater facing the ocean and explore the other hotels on the horseshoe beach just to the west; I remember a memorable afternoon spent swimming in those hotels' pools. (We never swam in the Atlantis pools, though I suppose we could have; the other hotels were just more welcoming. And relaxed about supervision.)

Now, of course, the canal has been filled in; the pond has been dredged and enlarged and landscaped to create the Atlantis Marina, taking the shops and restaurants with it; the other hotels have long since been bought and obliterated to build more and more salmon pink Atlantis buildings. It's sad, in a way. Atlantis is a very fine resort, but it is still just a resort: very packaged and planned and glossy and commercial. It doesn't have the quiet dignity of the Ocean Club - a long, low building nearly hidden by palms and lush natural vegetation. There's very little Bahamas in Atlantis; the whole thing could just as easily be in Miami.

All the development is great for the Bahamas, in a way, especially in the Out Islands where jobs are few; but I miss the quieter pace of life I knew growing up. I miss the ability to just motor up in our old, patched dinghy to a sleepy restaurant on the water. Hopefully the Ocean Club and the Cloisters won't be soon affected by the ever-expanding Atlantis empire.