In last week’s post, Part Two of our saga, I over-shared about the Norwegian Breakaway and about our first time sailing with Norwegian. If you missed out on that monster of a post, you can read that here!
And two weeks ago I posted Part One of our adventure, our first time in the Big Apple, which you can read here!
This week, I’m going to wrap up this whole fan-dangled trifecta with the grand finale… Bermuda! I will try to keep it short & sweet, but there’s no guarantees.
Admittedly, neither of us knew much about Bermuda before we decided to cruise there. We knew there were songs about it. We knew that people get lost in the Bermuda Triangle. And that there are things called Bermuda Shorts, which I have a very hard time taking seriously…
We did a little bit of reading up beforehand and read Bermuda one of the more quiet islands of the Atlantic/Caribbean. There aren’t any ‘booze cruises’ or all-you-can-drink beach parties. Which honestly sounded good to us, the older we get, the less we like being around drunk strangers.
GEEK FACTS & NUMBERS: Because I like facts!
Population
Bermuda – 64,237
Columbus – 822,553
The entire county (Logan) where I grew up (just for comparison sake!) – 45,858
Land Area:
Bermuda – 20.6 sq mi
Columbus – 217.17 sq mi
Logan County – 458.43 sq mi
Bermuda: Day One
I woke up around 5:00 am the morning we were due in Bermuda. I happened to sit up in bed and saw a huge pilot boat whiz past! I accidentally woke Travis up in my scramble to leap out of bed to run to the door and investigate. So we brewed a few cups of coffee and took up post on our balcony. As we sipped our crappy coffee, we watched as tiny lights started to become visible on the dark horizon. Bermuda!
By the time we were beginning to dock, it was about 7 am and the sun was up. The dock is located inside the tip of the “hook,” so when our boat finally docked, you could see land surrounding the whole boat. It was really nice since our side of the boat (starboard) was faced away from the dock, so we had a gorgeous view of all of the beautiful homes dotting the hills across the channel/inlet thing instead of just staring at the nothingness of the open sea.
We were like two kids on Christmas morning as we scarfed our breakfast down to get ready for our first day in Bermuda! We were going to Snorkel Park and spending a day at the beach! Our package included unlimited use of snorkel gear, two loungers, one umbrella and an hour rental for a paddle boat or kayak. The beach was within walking distance of the ship and was kind of in this weird little area right next to the islands old fort walls.
The water, in all of the literature we read, promised to be “gin clear.” While it was a beautiful turquoise color, I’m not sure what kind of gin they’ve been drinking to compare it to! It wasn’t as clear as some of the other Caribbean locations we’ve been to like Georgetown, Grand Cayman or St. Croix, USVI, but it was still beautiful.
So we raced approximately 75 other people for prime real estate on the beach to set up our loungers. Have you ever seen the movie Far and Away, with Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, where in the end, the go out west to take part in a land rush? Well this is what it was like to stake a spot of beach.
We quickly discovered the beach was a little over-populated as we chose the last few lounges left whose front legs were actually sitting in the water. At least it was water front, right?
Well, sort of… we tried to grin and bear it as a gaggle of kids playing in the waves splashed water and flung piles of sand into the air and all over us as we tried to settle in and get sunscreen on etc. Before we even left our house several days before, we made a pact that no matter what, we were going to try to remain calm, cool and collected no matter what. This is something we both struggle with on a day-to-day basis as we deal with our menagerie of 2 ferrets, 2 dogs and a cat, our fast-paced jobs, and long commutes in a large city full of people who don’t drive well. Life is a rat-race! Sometimes screaming and tempers happen! But on vacation, we vowed, we would be the damn the Mayors of Happy-Town!
As a lump of sand catapulted off of a little boy’s shovel, who was leaping up and down and stomping in the sand in front of our chairs, flew into my eye, Travis smiled and reminded me… “Happy-Town!”
But the view was still beautiful. And slowly people started going out into the water and the beach didn’t seem quite as congested. So we got our gear and headed out for our own snorkel adventure!
Bermuda: Day Two
The next day we decided to have another beachy day and go to Horseshoe Bay Beach, which was about a 30 minute bus ride south of the dockyard. It is the most famous of all the pink-sand beaches in Bermuda. It’s listed as a family-friendly beach, since it has a lifeguard on duty, a cafe, shower house, restrooms and water sports equipment rental. It is also fairly large so we assumed it would be the best option at being able to sprawl out and not be on top of hundreds of other vacationers.
The water here was much clearer than at the snorkel park and was the most incredible shades of teals and blues. The sand had just the slightest hint of pink (you can read why their sand is pink here) and stretched out for quite a distance in a sort-of horse shoe shape. Facing out to sea, you could see different shades of blue which were different reef beds and sand bars and the varying depths. You can see all of those much better in aerial photos. Some of the parts of them stuck up out of the water several hundred feet out from the beach and you could watch as the waves crashed against them. I kept thinking it was some sort of sea creature leaping out of the water at first, but then realized it was just rocks!
The waves here were surprisingly huge! We swam and played in the waves for a few hours. This place was probably the second closest thing to paradise that I’ve ever experienced. (Our first closest thing to paradise is Rainbow Beach, St. Croix. These pictures don’t do it justice.)
There was even a little cove nearby where some of the families with smaller children could swim, protected from the harsh waves of the open ocean on the main part of the beach. There were lots of little colorful fish here that people were feeding cereal out of their hands.
We snapped this one last pic before we headed back to the bus. It doesn’t do the beach much justice, but we will always remember how gorgeous it was!
Bermuda: Day Three
Since we had already done exactly what we had wanted the first two days, we decided to mosey around town the third day and pick up some souvenirs and do some shopping.
Dining in Bermuda was very expensive. It was about $20 for a hamburger on several of the menus that we checked out. So we did all of our dining for free on the ship.
The shopping was very fairly priced and got small trinkets and things for everyone. The people of Bermuda were extremely pleasant (aside from the bar tender named “Tequila” at Snorkel Park who sounded like a catty girl as he preached to people about their bad manners for not saying “good morning” to him first before placing their order. Sigh.)
Even though we only saw about 1/3 of the island, which was MUCH bigger than we anticipated, we couldn’t believe how clean and beautiful it was. And we later found out, we didn’t even go into the higher end area of the island. Even their old bus shelters were covered in murals freshly painted by the school students. There were no “slums,” that we saw anyway. All of the homes were also freshly painted and cared for with well manicured lawns. The roofs of the homes were all cement, painted white, we assume to reflect the sun’s heat and help to keep the home cooler in the warmer months.
Bermuda is a British territory and there are a few reminders of that, like their telephone booths. Although there are no longer phones inside them, they still stand throughout the island. They’re made of cast-iron or some other hard-core metal, so I’d imagine it’d be a task to remove them!
We were a little disappointed there were no free WIFI spots, not even for customers of restaurants or bars. Call us spoiled Americans, but we’re used to free WIFI everywhere in the states. We even found free WIFI in Jamaica and the Grand Caymans on our last vacation. We hadn’t spoken to our family in 5 days, and figured since I had an aunt in the hospital when we left and people were watching our house and animals, we probably should check in. So we found a WIFI station that sold packages (at $10/hour) the connection was slow, but worked well enough to shoot out a few emails.
We walked around for a few hours, but even after a few Gosling’s ginger beers (non-alcoholic soda, kinda like ginger ale), the heat and humidity quickly got the best of us. I hadn’t even had a chance to have a Dark ‘n Stormy or a Rum Swizzle, two of Bermuda’s “national drinks.” 😦 But it was too damn hot and the only bar we went to, Tequila – that bar tender, was a jerk. We were due to be back on-board by 4:30, so we bid farewell to Bermuda as we stood on the pier, admiring the view.
On the pier, we watched as this guy tried his hand at “Coconut Rockets.” They’re jet-powered shoes that are connected to this jet ski. As the driver of the jet ski opens the throttle, the jet ski’s jets are diverted into the black hose connected to the coconut rocket shoes, which then lift the wearer up out of the water, sometimes 10 feet or higher! We winced as we watched this guy and several others before him bite it over and over again and do face-plants into the water again. It looked like it might be fun, albeit painful and tiresome.
After we got back on the ship, a quick afternoon rain blew in and from our balcony we saw not only one rainbow…
But TWO rainbows! You could see both of them from end to end, although they were too close to get in frame on my camera. It was a pretty grand finale!
We set sail at 5 pm that day and 2 short days later we were back in the states where we caught this amazing sunrise in New York City.
We spent the next 11 hours in a car driving home, sick with colds. 😦 But we didn’t turn on the radio one time on that leg of the trip either and just enjoyed our last day of our honeymoon together, even though we were cooped up in a car.
We love new adventures, but I love coming home to my bed and shower too! Travis has more of a gypsy-soul and always craves new horizons, so it will be interesting to see where life takes us next and where we plant our feet one day.
If you made it through all three of these posts, holy cow! Thanks for sticking it out with me! And to think I thought originally I could cram them all into one post! HA! 😉
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