Burmuda Odd-y-see

Friday Day1:  Happy Hangovers

"Bermuda:  A small drinking island with a huge fishing problem."

Why I didn't buy that t-shirt, I will never know.  Probably the same reason my wife passed on the refrigerator magnet of two people on the a scooter, with the face on the passenger a look of sheer terror.  When you're in a place like Bermuda, time just kinda stands still and you figure that aww what the heck, I'll have time to swing 'round again before I go and pick it up.  The pace is much more relaxed and easy than back here in the good old 'wake/work/eat/shit/sleep/do it all again' USA.  There were moments when I thought I truly had all the time in the world.  Even much slower than the pace of life in Europe.

On the way down there, we had an overnight stopover in New York.  I got us a hotel right up close to the La Guardia Airport and we took a taxi downtown to one of our favorite eating spots on 48th street called Becko.  Man, did we ever chow down on the good stuff.  And they have a whole wine list of bottles under $20.00.  During desert I decided that now was the time to try that artichoke liqueur I had seen advertised in Switzerland called Cynar.  Now I understand why I don't know a single Swiss that drinks the stuff, 'cause it gave me one whopping hangover that I had to tote on into Bermuda very early the next morning.

Christie was oo-ing and ahh-ing over the color of the water as we came in for the landing at the Bermuda International.  I was trying to keep from urping and my head from exploding.  Once out on the ground, the fragrant breeze instantly restored a bit of my equilibrium, and they even had a live band playing some calypso stuff as you walked down the way in through customs.  Nice.  We found our luggage and the transport to the resort with very little hassle, official or otherwise.

In a very few minutes we pulled up to the entrance of the Grotto Bay Resort which was a mere mile from the airport.  Now, I know this sounds like a notta-good-thing to all those of you who have had the pleasure of living close to a major airport, but it turned out to be no problem at all.  Seems the planes only fly in during the day and you rarely notice them.  Grotto Bay was recommended to us by my friend Terri Hale who works for a client of ours at my Real Job.  She and her husband had spent their vacation there last year, and after hearing about how nice it was, Christie and I decided to give it a go.  Besides, this was the Year of the Beach.  My duty as a loving husband...

We already knew that check-in wasn't until 3pm and it was only about 20 minutes after 10 in the morning.  Our bags were piled in the ever-growing mountain of incoming luggage on one side of the porch while the porters were building a like-mountain of outgoing on the other side.   We just shook our heads at the poor stiffs that had to go.  That wouldn't be us for a long time yet!  We missed breakfast, so we decided to go to the beach until it was room time.

The Grotto Bay Beach resort is situated on a bay just across from the airport, on the Eastern side of the island.  It also sits on top of two rather large and impressive caves which contain the clearest salt water you can imagine.  One of the caves is used for swimming (we didn't) and the other one had been converted at one time to a disco, if you can dig that.  Needless to say, all geological activity in these two caves has been suspended and they are indeed 'dead' caves for all intents and purposes.  Still, they were impressive.  We made a mental note to visit the 'live' Crystal Cave later in the visit.

We retrieved our bathing suits from our pile o' luggage, changed in the beach rooms down by the bar and hit the sand.  True to the advance press in all the travel books, the sand was not hot.  But on the other hand it was not exactly pink as advertised.  We would later learn that the pink sand (colored with tiny pieces of coral) was pinkest on the south beaches.  We spread the towels and sat down.

The beaches on Bermuda are very small in girth, unlike our beaches in the US that can stretch for miles.  What they lose in quantity is more than made up for in quality, as we found that each one we visited had its own truly unique and delightful spin on the sand-and-surf motif.  One great thing is that the sand never gets hot, due to it's make-up.  The Grotto Bay beach was perhaps just shorter than a football field in length, beginning at the volcanic rocks to the left and ending up at the Scuba Look sport shop on the right.  We lay there in the sun for a bit and I could feel the hangover draining out of me so I decided to pull out the fins and mask and explore the snorkeling aspect of our new surroundings.

A really cool thing about Bermuda is that it is encircled by barrier reefs.  This was not a cool thing to the early explorers who routinely ran aground and tore the shit outta their shiny new ships, but for the modern diver it is a godsend.  You don't have to go out very far at all to see all kinds of marine life.  Very colorful parrot fish, angel fish, lots of big groupers, crabs, barracuda, sharks, you name it, they all flock to these places.  Each reef is different, yet the same.  We even had a small ship/boat wreck right there in the bay.  I never did nail down whether or not it was a 'real' wreck, or sunk for the tourists.

We had some lunch and some more sun before it was time to check in at 3pm.  In fact, we had plenty of sun for the whole day by then. I had promised myself that I wouldn't get over-done and be miserable and as I had already blown my other promise to not drink so much I would be miserable, decided to opt for plenty of the sunscreen.  As it turned out, I got righteously brown and didn't suffer one bit of bad sunburn.  Hey, maybe there is something to all this caution and moderation bullshit after all!

We found the room to be quite nice.  I had hoped for a king-size bed, but we ended up with two full-size ones, which turned out to be just fine as we slept in one and piled all our gear on the other one.  The resort is made up of a series of buildings all over that side of the hill, most of them with three stories.  You enter through one side and each has a private balcony on the other side.  We were in the second building, second floor, leftmost apartment.  It was called the Pembroke Lodge, but after a few days of the Bermudian prices we re-christened it the Plumbroke Lodge as we struggled to make the dollars last.

One quick tip, if you ever go to Bermuda forget about the Discover Card!  Here it is my fave, I have the best rate, they are really responsive, and I just love them.  I read in the Fodor's guide that it was taken to a much smaller degree in Bermuda.  It turned out to be so small that we could not find one shop, bank, atm, or drug dealer (just kidding!) that would accept it.  I had to use my higher-rate (and almost maxed out) Visa and my American Express.  I even called Discover mid-week and they couldn't tell me anywhere on the island that used it.  Bahamas yes, Bermuda no said the friendly support person.

We got cleaned up, hung out a bit, and decided to stick close to home for dinner the first night.  We didn't get the all-inclusive plan as we love to check out different restaurants, but our plan did include breakfast.  We're not that adventurous that early.  Besides, I usually make light of that meal.  We even had a coffee pot in our room that made some good coffee, despite having to use that powdered creamer, which I am convinced is a world-wide communist plot.

Now, don't drop over dead, but I actually took two suits with me on vacation!  We had heard/read that as the Bermudians were fairly conservative not only were there no topless beaches on the island (damn!), but you were expected to dress better for dinner.  It turned out that most places only demanded what was termed as 'smart casual', i.e. no flip-flops, sleeveless t-shirts, cut-offs etc.  If you showed up in slacks and a golf shirt you were okay.  There were a few places that required a coat and tie for men, but it turned out that we couldn't afford them anyway.

We had a good dinner in the dining room, a couple of drinks and that was pretty much it for the rest of the night.  At least, that's all that my wife will let me tell you about!

Saturday Day 2:  Hell's Angels on (very small) Wheels

The first thing we did after breakfast the next morning was walk on over to what they called the Cycle Livery to rent a scooter.  Unless you want to pay the exorbitant taxi fares or wait on the bus to run when it wants to, this is the only way to get around Bermuda.  There is no such thing as a rental car, they simply don't exist.  In Bermuda, you are allowed only one car per household.  You can see the wisdom of this when you go out and about on the island.  The traffic can be thick at times, especially in Hamilton during rush-hour and if they had a gazillion gaping tourists trying to drive while simultaneously oo-ing and ahh-ing over the scenery, it would be a scene of complete chaos.

Everyone is warned the danger of riding a scooter over the roads of Bermuda.  A lot of people who rent them have either never ridden one, or haven't been on any motorized two-wheeler for the last 35 years.  Also, the Bermuda roads are up-and-down blind curves cut into the volcanic rock with plenty of hidden entrances stuck in for surprise.  And, you are driving on the left side of the road, which is counter-intuitive if you have grown up driving anywhere but Great Britain, Japan, or any other place taught to drive by the British.  At least the roads are in great repair, by and large.

The other danger is the Bermudians themselves.  I think they are as poor drivers as any I have ever seen, and you know what I think of the drivers here in Jackson county, Alabama!  They will turn in front of you without warning, or pull out in front of you at the drop of a hat.  They will also be found coming head-on at you if someone else is stopped in their lane.  The guys that drive the small work trucks don't know what 'tarp that load' means.  And you can tell which drivers the Bermudians are;  they have all the cars!

The bike we were given was a small beat up navy-blue Peugeot 50cc scooter with a license number of H715.  We called it Old 715 and became attached to it for no matter how hard we flogged it, no matter how much stuff we loaded in the basket, it took a licking and kept on ticking.  The speedometer didn't work, but that was no problem as the thing probably didn't ever get over the island-wide speed limit of 20 MPH.  I only wished the odometer had worked so I could log how far we traveled.  To get the thing to stop, you had to give a mighty squeeze of both the front and rear brakes. 

The scooter guy had me do a couple of laps around some pylons to prove that I wasn't totally inept, and we were given the go-ahead to venture forth into the wild Bermudian streets.  We decided to head off towards St. George since it was the closest.  It was freaky being out on the left side, but I just tried to go with the flow and let it all work itself out.  I got lost a couple of times, but found the way with no problem.  After all, how lost can you get on a small island?  Besides, it was vacation and I liked getting lost, it was my prerogative.

The Town of St. George, known to everyone  as 'St. Georges' was the first capital of Bermuda.  It is a much smaller town than Hamilton, towards the western side.  We actually liked it much better there than Hamilton, it is more laid back.  The harbor is small, but we knew that cruise ships still docked there during the week.  We had seen them leaving on Friday from the beach in front of our hotel.  As soon as we arrived it was evident that some kind of shindig was in the making as they were setting a bandstand up in the town square.  The ubiquitous smack, smack, smack of the dreaded drum check was blasting through the PA system.  Upon inquiring, we were told that it was the Portuguese festival.  I didn't know there was a sizable Portuguese minority there, but that was in fact true.

We roamed around the small streets there for awhile, checking out some shops and stuff, then decided to ride on in search of some new scenery.  We motored out to the end of the island and at the farthest turn-around discovered the remnants of an old and very small fort we learned was named Alexandria's battery.  Right next to it was a small beach, about as wide as a normal house.  After climbing around on the fort a bit, a local who was hanging out drinking some beer told us that we could find lots of pretty sea glass at that little beach.  Turned out that this beach would be our fave and we pretty much adopted it as our own, naming it Glass Beach.  We combed the shore and picked up a bit of the glass and made plans to return.

Sea glass, for all those of you who don't know, isn't some natural by-product of the ocean.  In the days before recycling, they used to throw all the old glass off the point around that battery and over time it has gotten broken and tumbled by the tide and polished on the sand and coral into interesting and sometimes beautiful shapes.  There were all colors, bottle green, brown, china, even some blue that was hard to find, and some nice turquoise colors.  We ended up coming home with a ton of the stuff.  Look for my exquisite hand-made sea glass jewelry on the Home Shopping Network soon....

Back on the ol' scoot and we were off to another close-by destination, Fort St. Catherine.  Only a few minutes from where we were, this is a much larger fort and we had a good old time climbing around on it and imagining defending the Empire from an attack of bloodthirsty pirates.  We could see the beach at Tobacco Bay just across from it, and made plans to check that out later as well.  

Looming over the fort on the adjacent hill was a large obviously resort-like structure, surrounded by a very nice golf course.  I had to look at it for a few seconds to notice what had struck me as odd about it.  Although sitting smack-dab on this choice plot of land it appeared to be totally deserted, yet not completely abandoned.  I wondered what it was, but never thought to ask anyone right then.  I found out later from some guys on the ferry who were experienced Bermuda hands that it was the old Club Med.  It was closed by the club when all of the big attractions moved to the south beaches and Hamilton.  They have a couple who lives in the place and keeps it from falling apart.  They apparently want too much for anyone to seriously make an offer of taking it over and running it, and they don't seem to want to sell.  Crazy, baby.  Wish I had that much cash.

A side trip here:  if you are a golfer or a tennis player, this is the island for you.  We are neither and can't get all worked up about the tennis part of is, because you've seen one court you've seen 'em all, right?  But the golf courses we saw we so invitingly beautiful that I almost wanted to get some cleats and a bag of clubs and hit the fairway, smacking the little balls into the fourth dimension just to be able to walk the course.  Every time we blasted (well, maybe not blasted at 20 mph) by one we thought of Kevin's wife Miki who is an avid golfer.

We headed back to St. Georges and caught a bit of lunch at a little place called the Carriage House before trying to locate St. David's lighthouse, the old lighthouse still working on this side of the island.  After a few wrong turns, we found ourselves in the parking lot only to discover that the lighthouse was not open just then.  Bummer.  We'd be back.

That night we thought we'd check out the Portuguese-a-thon back in St. Georges.  We parked the scooter and saw that there were indeed many Portugeezers sitting around and as the sun was going down things would start happening soon.  Dinner was had at Freddies, upstairs on the balcony overlooking the square where we were treated to the dinner show of a belligerent drunk being herded into a police car.  The food was very good, but I had hoped they would have some cool British beers on tap.  Only the standard Guinness and Bass, which is just great, but I was hoping for some Watney's or something.

As we were finishing up dinner, the Portu-get down was cranking up, a girl was singing to a bunch of small children onstage and the crowd was dancing.  After that, there were a couple of musicians.  The band I had seen getting ready that afternoon was gonna be later I guess, but in the end we didn't stick around for all of it.  After dinner we walked around the square and over to one of the buildings on the harbor front.   They had it decorated with a big statue of the J-man which was surrounded by flowers and gifts and stuff.  There were tables set up all around which were piled high with all sorts of food:  cakes, candies, confections you name it.  I wondered if the folks were gonna eat it, if it was like a pie judging contest or whatnot, or if it was a sacrificial feast of the gods wherein a naked virgin would be sacrificed or someone's heart cut out.  We didn't stick around for that either, but I will guess it was more on the tame side!

Sunday Day 3:  Beaches and More Beaches

The little scooter got a big work out on Sunday as we rode all over the island trying out the various beaches.  I spent a bit of time taking wrong turns and getting us somewhat lost a couple of times, but we always found our way.  We found that the fabled pink sand of Bermuda was the pinkest on the south beaches.  This is pretty much all we did this day, except that for dinner we ate at the first microbrewery on the island.  They had a very nice summer wheat beer that I slurped down along with some killer fish cakes.  There was so much I couldn't eat it all.  Went to bed early, but not right to sleep if ya know what ah mean...

Monday Day 4:  Dolphins, Dockyards, Swizzle

Got up early so we could ride the scooter the whole blasted way across the island to the old Royal Naval Dockyards.  Our plan was to do the 'swim with the dolphins' thing they have there.  The route took us past the south beaches way around the hook of the island to the west.  It was great just buzzing down the roads looking at the scenery and the architecture.

The first thing you notice about the houses on Bermuda are the colors.  They are all painted in bright but pleasing pastels ranging from key lime to vivid yellow to pink to deep blue.  It is a comforting and pleasing landscape, makes you feel safe because you would think that anyone who paints their houses in such colors couldn't possibly be up to anything dangerous.  (Although growing, probably due to the dreaded American TV, crime is still pretty low.)  The next thing that catches your eye are the roofs of these houses.  They are fairly peaked with ridges running down their length like little waterfalls, and are constructed so they channel maximum rainwater into the drainpipes that end up not on the front lawn, but in the basement.  This water is periodically collected by the water trucks that you will see all over the island.  It is processed and cleansed and recycled for drinking and stuff.  There is not one body of fresh water on the island, and they have to conserve everything.  I think they even have a big desalinization plant, it would stand to reason, but I didn't ask.

The south beaches are where all the rich people stay, and you can see their hotels built on the rocks right on the ocean, and on the peaks overlooking the beaches.  Lots of these places have their own private beaches.  The public beaches there are great though, and they have the pink sand the island is known for.  One good thing is that the sand stays cool no matter how hot it is.  Horseshoe bay is the biggest, and on the weekends, the most packed.

We rode on down the South Road past all this until we hooked up again with the Middle Road, which would take us out to the western end of the island and the dockyards.  We noticed that heading toward this end of the island things began to get a little bit, well low rent in that the opulent rich houses and the resorts gave way to smaller and not as picture-post-card houses as on our side of the island.  We stopped for gas across the street from a parking lot where a lot of obviously bad-boy wannabes were hanging out.  On our way back we saw the police herding some of them into a car.  Yo' in da hood!

As we neared the end of the trail, we crossed several very small bridges that tied the outer reaches of the island to the main part, and could look across the bay and see the busy port of Hamilton to the east.  Just before we got to the dockyards, we passed the shiny new maximum security prison on our left.  Could you imagine being locked up while all this great island was right past the door?  Honest officer, I promise never to speed again!

The Royal Dockyards must have been bustling with ship and navy activity at one time, they are huge.  There is still pretty much ship activity, from cruise ships to freighters and cargo ships, but the activity is centered around shopping and eating.  The old out-buildings  and warehouses have been converted to a huge shopping mall containing all sorts of stuff, plus a bar and eatery or two.  The 'victualing yard' and it's adjacent building, ditto.  We looked about in one of the buildings and watched the guy do the glass-blowing thing. Must have been 120 degrees inside.

To go do the dolphin swim, we had to pay ten bucks each for entry into the large fort which contained the military and maritime museum.  We made our way over to the dolphin area and could see several of the agreeable animals lapping the pens and once in awhile jumping out of the water for seemingly no reason than they just felt like it.  We were ready to swim with them, but when we inquired found that a short program where you could only touch them would be $87.50 apiece, while the 'swim' would be a whopping $195.00 for each!  We love dolphins as much as the next island visitor, but almost icked at the prices.  In the end, we simply watched while some other of our more monetarily endowed tourist brethren did the thing.

We consoled ourselves with walking all over the fort and seeing the various exhibits.  We love museums anyway, but if you don't I guess you'd have been bored.  They had various rooms dedicated to all sorts of maritime stuff, from early wrecks and exploration to historic racing skiffs.  Up on the hill we visited the walls and gun emplacements, before entering the drab-looking multi-story structure that had housed the Admiralty.

As drab as the place was on the outside, inside everything had been restored to its former glory.  Beautiful wooden doors and staircases and trim abounded.  There were also exhibits here covering island history and the place of Bermudians in the world at large.  It was cool to sit down at one of the large conference tables and pretend to be a big-dick Admiral or General planning a campaign.  After a bit of this, the hunger pangs started to make their inroads into our psyche and we repaired to the Frog and Onion Pub down in the appropriately named Victualing building.  After the meal I watched this handsome magician guy attempt to put the make on some visiting devotchkas by charming them with his sleigh-of-hand antics while Christie cruised the nearby gift shop.

On the way back, we checked out a couple of beaches briefly, deciding to return.  It was late afternoon when we made it back to Grotto Bay, and I can't rightly remember what we did with the rest of the afternoon.  In the evening we were out cruising for some reason, and made it to the famous Swizzle Inn for our dinner reservations around 8.

The Swizzle Inn is one of the oldest bars on the island.  So it was fitting that we get hassled by one of the oldest drunks on the island while awaiting our dinner.  I suppose 'hassled' is too harsh a word.  We were sitting outside right on the railing next to the street and there was this obviously polluted local introducing himself to everyone and babbling some inane bullshit to anyone who would listen, and even invisible people we couldn't see.  The owner came out several times and asked him politely to leave.  Finally, as he was really getting on everybody's nerves, they had to tell him they were calling the cops.  With that he flagged down a taxi and climbed in the front seat by the driver.  Poor driver, as the guy was blithering and blathering the whole time.  At least they were headed towards St. Georges and would run out of island before the driver got his head talked off.

Our waitress Ann, a cheerful black girl, spent plenty of time answering our questions and telling us about Bermudians.  I asked her if black and white got along as well as it seemed, and she said they don't care about that in Bermuda.  While it can't be that idyllic, I didn't see the signs of racial tension like you can in the US and other places.  She also brought out a book for us to sign and draw pictures in.  They have these guest books dating from back in the 40's, and they keep them up on the mantel inside so when you come back you can find your story you wrote the first time you were here.  Cool.  We had some beer and Christie had the famous rum swizzle.  It was pronounced good.  So was the food.

We topped off the evening by watching the last episode of For Love or Money where the guy picked the gold-digger and got shafted and sent home without money or pussy.  Id-jit.

Tuesday Day 5:  Shopping (it hadda happen!)

We started off  the day by making an attempt at visiting St. David's Lighthouse over on our side of the island.  When we got up to the lighthouse though, we found that it was closed for a few hours.  We elected not to wait around that long, and as Christie had followed me around doing pretty much what I wanted to do the previous days, I had to give in to a shopping day.  So we hopped on the trusty scooter and downtown we went.

"Downtown" no matter where you are on the island means only one thing:  Hamilton.  If you live near St. Georges and you say you are going "downtown" it means you are going to Hamilton.  Hamilton is the largest and by far the most cosmopolitan sector of the island with all the shops and gourmet restaurants in a relatively small area.  Front St. is the biggie, with the huge cruise ships tied up right there across the street from the shops and restaurants.  The people on the cruise ships simply use those as their hotels and walk across the street (or dodge traffic rather) to shop and sup.  I could dig it, and I know we'll have to cruise sometime, but I liked our freedom at the resort so much.

Christie immediately hit the shops and stores on Front Street, with me doggedly following behind the required two steps.  Christie is an avid shopper, and a good one who always seems to find the best stuff on sale or marked down somehow.  There was one exclusive shop that she avoided going into knowing that it was way outta the range of our budget and she didn't want to drive herself crazy.  She also shops for everyone else, too.  She must have pickup up twenty things for friends.

I amused myself looking at all the people, especially all the rich people with a combination of amusement of their self-important air and envy that they were rich in the first place.  I also hit the tobacco shops, not for the illegal-in-the-US Cuban cigars, but for some Swiss Muratti Ambassador cigarettes with no luck..  Yeah, yeah I know.  I am supposed to be a non-smoker.  Get off my back, I was on vacation!

After a whole afternoon of shopping (we had actually gotten a bit of a late start), we decided to repair to the Hog Penny Pub for some grub.  The Hog Penny was a great little place, very English Pub-like as the name would lead you to believe, and named after the first coins minted on the island which depicted the indigenous wild hogs (now extinct) which looked suspiciously like the Arkansas Razorbacks mascot.  The food was great, but I made an observation about the state of the beer available in Bermuda.

Since Bermuda is fairly British in character, I had hoped to find some of the more exotic brews (to us Yanks anyway) being offered on tap.  I had in mind a Watney's Red Barrel in particular, but even a Boddington's or Samuel Smith's would have been welcome.  The only Brit brews I found on tap where ever we went were the Holy Trinity of Guinness, Bass, and Harp.  And occasionally a nice Murphy's Stout.  While that is just great, I was hoping for something you just don't see in the USA.  The beer was invariably fresh, however, and the all the bartenders had the Guinness and Murphy's slow pour down pat.

I can't remember what we did the rest of the evening afterwards, probably just hung out, rode around the island and then got nekkid back at the room....

Wednesday Day 6:  Fast Ferrys, Tuscany, Terminator

We had wanted to take the ferry ride from our tip of the island to the west end, and it only ran on weekdays so we made up our minds that today was the day.  The plan was to load the scooter on board, take the ferry to the west end (the Dockyards), hop over to Hamilton, get off there for some lunch, then scoot back to the hotel to get ready for the weekly Harbour Nights celebration downtown.  Yeah, I know I spelled harbor the English way, but that is of course how they spell it.  Gives it a bit more colour don't you think?

The ferry was to leave from the harbor in St. Georges, so we went down there to get tickets and to let Christie do some quick scouting for some more gifts.  I wanted to go online to see if there was anywhere I could use my Discover Card, as mentioned earlier.  I took a gander at the 'net in a little cyber cafe while she did her thing.

We got on the ferry and sat down next to this father-son duo who turned out to be very interesting people.  They were the ones who told us the Club Med story, and how the south beaches had one year almost been closed due to the influx of packs of Portuguese Men O' War.  They had been coming to Bermuda for over ten years, having a time share up in the hills above St. Georges.  Love meeting people like this!

The ferry really knocked our socks off with it's un-looked-for speed.  Once the thing was out of the channel, the cap'n let her rip and I could not believe a vessel of its size could get up and run like it did.  Just amazing.  Our two new friends said that the trip used to be much more leisurely, but that the businessmen who rode the thing every day had campaigned for a newer and faster method of travel.  Well, they sure got it!  They told us that they had another boat on the island, I forget what they called it, that was the fastest passenger boat going.  I wasn't really interested in that, I was getting with the slow poking island program.

We definitely had bad hair when we got to the dockyards!  The boat was moving so fast the wind would about knock you down, and it was hard to stand up on deck.  We disgorged some passengers, then shoved off for the harbor in Hamilton, at a much more reserved clip.  There was a lot to see on this leg of the journey.  Nice houses all over the place, sailing vessels big and small, and a few small regatta of sailing skiffs.  I could have a winter home here for sure if I would suddenly find myself rich.

 We got downtown and did a bit of shopping (again) and poking around and just generally checking out the surroundings.  We did a little exploring and riding and beaching it later in the afternoon, exploring some good snorkeling sites like Church Bay.  Church Bay was great, except that the current was pretty swift.  I got involved in the underwater scenery so much that I was oblivious to the fact that I hadn't popped my head out of the water for a long time, and when I finally did I found that Christie had the little beach guy looking for me to make sure I wasn't taken away by the sea.

We had made plans to go downtown for the weekly (summertime) Harbour Nights festival in the evening.  Every Wednesday during the summer season they block off Front Street along the wharf where the cruise ships are moored and have live musical entertainment on a stage set up there as well as craftsmen and vendors and food.  And it's free.  We planned on attending that happening the first part of the night and then going to the Little Theatre and seeing Ar-nold in Terminator 3.

For dinner, we had reserved a seat at the restaurant Tuscany.  We arrived a bit early and were seated promptly and sat down to the best dinner we had since Becko in New York.  If you like Italian cuisine, i.e. if you are ALIVE then you have to go here if you ever visit Bermuda.  Everything was great from the service to the bread to the main course on down to the house wine.  We even got a balcony seat overlooking the melee down on Front Street.  Hey, are we on vacation or what???

After the wonderful dinner, we spent a couple of hours walking back and forth through the mass of people looking at jewelry, artifacts, and trinkets of all kinds.  We ended up buying a really cool print by a local artist, who placed it in a mailing tube and all for only $22.00.  The frame we got for it here at home costs more than that.  You can get deals everywhere, even in an expensive place like Bermuda.  Watched a bit of the entertainment, which was geared towards the tourists (as opposed to rockers or rappers) however the performers were good . 

We then made our way to the Little Theatre, just up Queen Street at the low end of the Front Street strip.  It was aptly named as I remarked that I had seen living rooms bigger than this.  It was kinda warm inside and every seat ended up being taken.  The movie was, well you know.  The cool thing about it was the cartoon at the beginning which was from local Bermudians and it starred some frogs and lizards. 

By the time we got out of the movie, most of the activity had died down.  We walked a couple of blocks and found Old 715 amongst the throng of other two-wheelers, fired her up and headed for home.  I loved riding at night there, it is so nice and cool and the roads outside of Hamilton are virtually deserted.  We ended up getting in about 12:30 which was the latest we stayed out the whole time.  Are we getting settled or what?  We didn't care, we had as much fun as we wanted to.

Thursday Day 7: Scuba and Smacked Down by Henry VII

Thursday was a day I had been waiting for:  I was going to go scuba diving for the first time in years.  Since I had been certified in a muddy lake in Oklahoma I hadn't been once.  Before that, I did a couple of dives in Mexico, but I can't consider myself very experienced.  I had forgotten my certification card, which still had a picture of me with really long hair and listed my old girlfriend as the emergency contact, so I was relegated to the beginning dive.  I didn't really mind, as anywhere around Bermuda is great diving.

The dive was not to take place until 1pm, so we had plenty of time in the morning to do other things.  We went over to St. David's Lighthouse to find it open this time, and climbed up for a look. It is a rather small lighthouse, but charming nonetheless, and we made our way to the top via the spiral staircase.  At the top there was a guy wiring the light up.  I asked him what he was doing and he answered that there are two lights in the thing and the bottom one didn't start up the previous evening so he was re-wiring it.  I thought that was neat.  I like seeing how things work.  He didn't hand me the soldering gun or anything.

We had decided that we would head on into St. Georges to see the Dunking of the Wench that would take place there dockside.  On our way there, we were traveling on probably the longest stretch of straight, wide road on the island, right next to the airport.  A work van was coming towards us in the opposing lane.  Right when he got to us, he swerved off the road to the right (we're driving on the left, remember) and wedged the van in between the chain-link airport fence and a telephone pole.  It was just in my peripheral vision, and Christie didn't even see it happen.  I said, "Holy Shit! Did you see that?!"  We decided that we should do our civic duty and turn around to make sure the guy was okay.

When we got back to him, he was getting out of the van.  He had a glassy-eyed dazed look on his face that said either drink or drugs.  Or at the very least serious sleep deprivation.  Christie asked him if he was okay and if he needed us to call someone.  He just kinda shook his head and kept smiling a goofy smile at us.  She pointed to his cell phone on the ground beside the van.  He picked it up and just said, "Okay!  Okay!" waving and smiling the whole time.  We just shook our heads and headed for town. I was thankful that when he passed out or whatever he did that he went off the other side of the road.  He could have just as easily come our way.

Almost into St. Georges, I was following another work truck that had some wood in the back. Next thing you know, the truck hits a bump on one of the curves and the wood starts tumbling out.  I do a little zig-zag and miss it, keeping us thankfully upright.  Man, you gotta be on your toes around the Bermudian drivers!

We arrived to see the Dunking of the Wench.  This is a play on what they used to do back in the Good Old Days when public displays of corporal punishment were a form of entertainment.  The town crier came on with his "Hear ye, hear ye" thing, and asked for some strapping volunteers to help in the dunking.  I of course volunteered.  Me and three other guys were to actually dunk the wench.  A pleasantly-ugly girl dressed in period clothes arrived and the town crier issued the verdict that she was to be dunked for gossiping and nagging.  The girl protested vigorously but in the end of course was dunked by yours truly and his merry men.  I think it's important that everyone do their duty and help the justice system out once in awhile.  A-hyuck!

After a quick lunch, it was dive time.  Christie was going to, what else, go shopping while I did my thing.  She walked me down to the dive shop just below our hotel, then took a bus into Hamilton.  I met up with the dive guys and we got suited up and listened to a bit of a crash course in diving. There was several older women along, plus a younger girl that knew them.  There was also a couple who were just going to go snorkel while we dove on the reef.

We did the obligatory 'course' and the practical working of the gear down at the beach, then hossed it all onto the boat and we were off.  We motored out past the eastern end of the island and the guys carefully anchored the boat so as not to tear up the fragile coral reef below.  In a few minutes we were over the side and digging on the flora and fauna of the undersea world.

We broke off into little groups of four divers to each instructor and made our way  down into the reef.  Whereas I didn't really see any different or more colorful species of fish-life than I had snorkeling around the reefs closer to shore, the reefs themselves were more fantastic.  They were more colorful and more extensive, and at times you felt like you were flying low down the halls of an old cathedral the way the coral stacks rose up around you.  I would wind my way around for awhile then go through an opening and be in a totally different 'room.'  It was wonderful.

I wished I could have had some pictures of this, but the camera I borrowed from Christie's employer Dr. Fremming decided to quit just then.  Later when we got up on the boat I could see it had filled with water.  Back home, Dr. Fremming told me that it was only rated for 17 feet.  Jeez, I never thought to ask, figuring that a dive camera would be rated for at least 30-40 feet.  Sorry doc.....

We flippered around until the dive master signaled that it was time to go up.  I really didn't want to leave that world just yet, but had little choice in the matter.  The final splurge of underwater beauty happened then, as I look upward towards the ladder from the boat, I saw a whole school of transparent white jelly fish making their ghostly way past us.  Incredible!

Back on the boat, I got a serious case of the shivers.  I hadn't felt cold down there, but I guess I could have used a wet suit because all my body heat had been drained.  I did the best I could trying to keep warm on the way back.  We went back a different way than we had come, and the dive guys were hoping that we could make it underneath this low bridge before the tide got too high.  When we came to it, they put the engines on dead slow and we ducked down in the boat to keep from smacking our heads on the bridge itself while cars and trucks rumbled by inches above us.

Back at the ranch, we returned the gear and said our good-byes, and I hoofed it back to the room to find that Christie had returned from shopping only moments before.  She had had a good time, but said the bus drivers were the only rude Bermudians she had encountered.  She also told me the story of meeting an old guy and his wife who crashed their scooter on the first mile and ended up in the hospital.  Bummer.

For dinner that evening, we had reservations at the venerable Henry VIII down on the south beach overlooking the big Sonesta resort.  The Henry VIII came well-recommended and we expected a fine meal.  We both had seafood, Christie had something with shrimp in it, and I had a pasta dish with shrimp and scallops.  Nothing really tasted bad, but I thought that my shrimp tasted kinda sweet, like it had been soaked in sugar or something weird like that.  Something wasn't sitting well in my stomach by the end of the dinner, and though I didn't really feel bad, I couldn't even finish the one pint of Guinness I had ordered.

By the time we rode the scoot home, I was feeling dizzy and funky.  We laid down to go to sleep after watching a bit of TV, but by that time all my muscles were tightening and I was beginning to feel decidedly sick to my stomach.  I tossed and turned and sweated for several hours before getting up in the middle of the night and throwing up until there was nothing left to throw up.  Then I threw up some more.  About an hour later, Christie had to make a run for it, but only had stomach cramps and diarrhea and then she was done.  Not me.  I writhed around in agony for a bit longer until I finally passed out.

So, if you go to Bermuda, my advice is to skip ol' Henry!  It was also our most expensive meal of the trip, topping Becko in NY by $15.00 and the wonderful Tuscany by $5.

Friday Day 8: Green Day

I was feeling none to sparky by the time breakfast time rolled around.  Actually, I was really green around the gills, but still felt the need to put something in my belly.  Something nice and bland.  We struggled up to the lodge for the morning feed and I was able to down a bit of hot tea and some fruit, but that was about all.  I was mighty shaky walking back to the room.  We wanted to do something in the morning, but I had to go back to bed, I was feeling so bad.

Christie had made an appointment to go to a day spa over in St. Georges.  I was seriously wondering if I would be able to take her on the scooter or if she needed to get a cab or a bus.  I had initially planned to take her and go solo riding around the island for the two hours it would take for her spa treatment,  but I could tell that was not gonna happen.  In the end, I got it together sufficiently to take her to her appointment, but I rode back to the room and laid down again until it was time to go get her.  This was not my idea of how to spend my last days of vacation, lemme tell ya!

By the time I picked her up, I was feeling a bit better.  This isn't saying much, but I had been feeling so funky that anything was an improvement.  We decided that we would go back to the Glass Beach and just take it easy in the sun.  We loaded up the scooter and off we went.  I did some gentle snorkeling while she dig for some more sea glass.

Tiring of that beach, we rode on over to the adjacent Tobacco Bay, which was purported to have the best snorkeling on this side of the island.  This beach was bigger and packed with more people, but we still found a good ringside seat on a comfortable flat rock on the left side of the beach.  The snorkeling was good, and I saw a barracuda out on the far reaches of reef. 

I was swimming back in, and raised my head out of the water to make sure Christie didn't think I'd gotten swept out to sea, and saw that she was standing up looking for me.  I put my head back down and paddled a bit more, and when I raised my head again, she was waving me away.  I made a long look and came up on the other side wondering what was up.

It turned out that a lone Portuguese Man-o-War had found it's way into the bay and was close by where we were sitting.  An English guy next to us had his wife stung by the thing while I was out swimming.  The medics had taken her off to treat her burns.  Some local teenagers were trying to pull it out of the water/swat it with a piece of wood.  The air bladder was brilliantly purple-pink and looked like a plastic bottle floating around in the water.  They finally got it out on the rocks and smashed the air bladder.  When it popped, the remaining tentacles looked simply like a few pieces of seaweed.  You still didn't want to step on them, though!

We didn't do much the rest of the day, I was still pretty much not all there.  We did go into town to eat at an okay Chinese restaurant called Chopsticks.  It was a real local hangout, and it seemed that everyone who came in the door knew everyone else.  We may have been the only tourists there, at very least two of the few.  The food was all right, but I was only eating to survive at this point.  And I didn't feel like alcohol one bit.

Saturday Day 9:  Last Tango in Bermuda

 I got up feeling almost human on Saturday morning, but still not my usual hungry self.  We wanted to make the most of the last day we were in this beautiful place.  One of the things we did was to hop on Old 715 and scoot the whole way across the island one last time to the dockyards in search of that refrigerator magnet that I mentioned in the opening paragraph.  We were doomed to come up empty handed, as neither one of us could remember exactly where we saw it.  We enjoyed the ride, though.

On the way back, we visited the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse, the largest lighthouse on the island.  We had to make a left right beside Henry VIII and my tummy gave a little flutter at the memory, but it was all right.  This lighthouse was larger than St. David's and was perched on the highest point on the island.  A beautiful panoramic view greeted us as we stepped out on the catwalk.  It was warm but the wind was cool and we could see forever, the sea to the south, Hamilton to the north, and almost the whole way to the east and west ends of the island.  Down below in the former keepers house they had set up a nice little restaurant and that's where we ate, myself still gingerly.

We also visited the zoo/aquarium where I could finally identify lots of the fish and other animals I had seen on the reefs.  The zoo was small but very nice and the high point was going into the part that was covered over by wire mesh and the animals could run free.  Two zoo girls were 'walking' a very large iguana, not native to Bermuda.  They said that they were introducing him here little by little and that he had stowed away in some cargo, and was brought to them when he was discovered.  Three little red-headed monkeys were checking him out and hollering to each other.  One would come down and pull the big lizard's tail, squawk, and run off.  It was funny.

We stopped at the ice cream shop on the way back, loaded up the snorkel gear again, and made our last visit to 'our' beach to harvest one more crop of sea glass.  I was feeling okay and did some good snorkeling and even got Christie who is pretty spooked of the sea to come on out for a bit.  I really wished she would have let me show her the reefs, as they were just fabulous.

We had planned on a romantic dinner on the seaside, and had booked a reservation at the Whaler Inn, down on the south beaches.  It is funny how we rode the scooter in dress that we would not every be caught dead in on the Harley.  I was wearing a black suit jacket and she was all decked out in a flowing dress.  She had to twist it up in her lap on the scooter so it wouldn't drag the ground or get caught in the wheels. 

The Whaler was a very nice place, and when we got there discovered that if we had known we could have ordered a private dinner right on the beach.  I bet it would have cost a small fortune, but it would have been great.  As it was, we sat outside on the terrace overlooking the beach and the ocean and it was just fine.  The food was great, and I wished that I had been completely over my food poisoning so that I could have enjoyed it to the fullest.  I still couldn't eat much.  It was a nice romantic dinner, though.  I would like to do it again sometime.

On the way back, we just had to have a bummer but it could have been worse.  We came up over the hill to some fresh road-kill wherein it looked as if a Bermudian driver had gotten both a bicycle and a scooter in one blow.  There was junk all over the road and folks were helping people who were lying on the ground. The police were arriving just as we were passing.  At least it wasn't us.  I think that if I had to have a mishap, then non-fatal food poisoning was preferable to a gory crash.

We tried not to let that spoil the beautiful night and our last on Bermuda.  We had both been remarking all week long about how wonderful the nights are here.  Just fabulous and perfect, cool yet warm enough.  Our last was no different.  We stayed up as long as we could, trying not to think about what tomorrow would bring.

Sunday Day 10: Back to Reality

Sunday dawned too early.  We had our breakfast, and I took one last short spin on Old 715 before saying goodbye to it at the cycle livery next to the hotel.  We caught a crowded shuttle back to the airport.  Characteristically, our already heavy suitcases were now super-heavy, the biggest one being hard to lift.  The shuttle guy said this was nothing compared to the British luggage.  I inquired as to why, and he said all they packed were books and liquor.

The lines were long at the terminal, and I gazed enviously at those blessed souls who were in the short first-class lines.  We got everything checked and hit the duty-fee shop to pick up last minute gifts and divest ourselves of all that needlessly heavy money we were carrying.  Yeah right.

The cool thing about flying from Bermuda is that US Customs has their thing set up right there, so unlike coming back from Europe you can be cleared right there and don't have to hassle with putting all your luggage through the customs and then back on your connecting flight when you hit your hub in the US.  The only snag was a suspicious customs guy who grilled the living hell out of me about my watch.  I thought I was gonna have to produce a sworn affidavit from my Mom telling him that she'd bought it for me last Christmas.  He finally let us go.  Sheesh. A dozen Osamas probably slipped under the wire while I was getting the third degree.

There was nothing remarkable about the flights home, except that I had to sit beside an old guy who had the absolute most obnoxious denture breath I have ever encountered.  I had to keep my head turned towards Christie on my right for the several hours flight or I would get nauseous.  By the time we reached our layover in Raleigh, I had a nice crick in my neck from avoiding Mr. Sewage Breath.

Home always looks a bit drab after coming back from a beautiful place like Bermuda, but it is home nonetheless and it's always nice to sleep in one's own bed.  However, it is never very long before I am ready to get up and go again.  Next summer will be something tame and hopefully cheap, but I have my sights set for going 'home' to Switzerland in 2005 for my 50th birthday year.  There is always a possibility of a re-visit to Bermuda, it's such a great place.  When?  Who knows.

JimmyR 9/2003

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