Looking Through My Heart: June 2012

Brennan celebrated turning 23 months with moving up to the next classroom at daycare. He has been in the same room with mostly the same teachers since he started in October of 2010 so switching rooms is a big change. They said he did really well in his new room and he came home with several crafts already. I can't believe that in one month we'll have a 2 year old! Crazy how fast time flies. We are enjoying listening to him make sentences and he also seems to be using his imagination more..just a minute ago he was putting his tractor to bed by covering it up with laundry. He also cracks himself up now and covers up his mouth when he laughs at himself, so cute! He's such a polite little guy and remembers to say please, thank you, bless you, and your welcome. It melts our hearts when he says an impromptu I love you. Right now B's favorite foods are waffles (eating multiple per day some times), corn on the cob and deer sticks (which gross me out). I haven't been feeling well this week...pink eye (might need to have this diagnosis double checked tomorrow) and a cold or something has me down so I don't have many pics to share.

Cheese, my popsicle matches my shirt!

I wanted to take a minute and write a trip report about our vacation so that I don't forget everything that we did on our trip. We were in Bermuda at the end of May for a week. We stayed at the Fairmont Southampton, my review of the hotel can be found here .

Fairmont Southampton

pool at the resort

I absolutely loved Bermuda, the scenery and beaches were gorgeous, the people were friendly and showed great hospitality, the flight was short (and direct from Baltimore) and the service was excellent.

To give you a basis from my reference points, I’ve visited the following type of “Caribbean places” Turks and Caicos (2 times including Provo, Middle and North Caicos), Anguilla, Bahamas (Paradise Island), Punta Cana, La Ramona, and Riveria Maya...and Hawaii but that's been 10+ years and my memory is getting a little fuzzy on it but I do think that Bermuda resembled Hawaii. By far my husband and I’s 2 favorite islands that we've visited together before this trip were TCI and Anguilla. We loved the beaches in both places and TCI has the best restaurants that I’ve been to anywhere, including the US. In my opinion, Bermuda’s beaches certainly rival those found in Anguilla and TCI. We visited primarily the south shore beaches making our way from Horseshoe Bay down to Warwick by walking through the trails that are throughout the hillside. I thought these trails were awesome, I’ve never seen this before. In other places that we’ve been we’ve had to drive down roads that we aren’t sure are actually roads to find stunning and secluded beaches. It’s not at all like this in Bermuda. Bermuda even has public restrooms at some beaches as well as lovely parks up on the hillside with benches, grassy areas, and even playgrounds in some places. I loved all of the coves that we found while walking these south shore trails. Our almost 2 year old loved swimming in Jobson’s Cove, which is like a natural “baby pool”. We also went to Elbow beach which was a wide beautiful beach with soft sand. Another day we ended up at Church Bay, yet another beautiful place where everyone was seeing lots of great fish and other things snorkeling from the shore. You just can’t get enough of the endless turquoise water and dark rock formations along Bermuda’s coast. The island overall is kept immaculately clean. You really don’t see any rundown houses or buildings and downtown Hamilton is absolutely charming. Residents kept their properties well maintained and the Caribbean colored houses sprinkled throughout the island were so pretty! A visit to Gibbs Hill Lighthouse is a must to see the spectacular view of the island. I never felt unsafe in Bermuda and it’s just so easy to be a tourist in Bermuda as there is no language barrier and the dollar is accepted.

Church Bay

Trails along south shore

Elbow Beach

While on the island we ate at the restaurants listed below. We got many of our suggestions from my Mom's friend who lived on the island during his childhood and still returns frequently to visit family…other suggestions were of course from tripTrip Advisor. Keep in mind we had Brennan along so we tried to choose appropriate places for family meals. I’ll rate each on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being excellent and so on.

The Swizzle (in Southampton)
Service- 4
Food- 4
Atmosphere- 4
Food was good, especially the nachos. I had fish and chips but I really liked my husband’s wahoo which was the special of the evening. We sat outside which kept our son entertained because he could watch all of the mopeds passing by. A local musician was playing while we ate which we enjoyed. Loved the “motto” here: Swizzle Inn…Swagger Out, clever!

The Lobster Pot
Service- 4
Food- 4.5(but my husband’s meal and the chowder were definitely 5s)
Atmosphere-4
Again great food…loved the fish chowder! My husband again chose the better dinner…he had the snapper which was excellent, he said possibly the best fish dinner he’s ever eaten! I had a dinner special that came with the soup, mahi mahi (fish just OK compared to my husbands) peas and rice (didn’t really like this), vegetables, and ice cream for dessert.

Portofinos
Service- 5
Food- 4
Atmosphere- 4
Good Italian food and kids eat free. We had a great dessert which was ice cream with chocolate sauce, puff pastries and whipped cream, yum!

Mickeys Beach Restaurant at Elbow Beach Resort
Service- 5
Food 4.5
Atmosphere- 5
Right on the beach which in my opinion is the perfect spot to dine. The many waiters were very attentive and our steaks were excellent. All of the food I saw being served looked tasty.

The Dining Room at Gibbs Lighthouse
Service- 5
Food- 4
Atmosphere- 5
A spectacular view eating outside looking over all of Bermuda, a really wonderful setting. I had the fish chowder again, very tasty but not quite as good as the Lobster Pot's version. We both had the tuna which was good and served with nice sides (actually all restaurants had nice sides usually a potato often mashed and fresh vegetables)…I can’t give it a 5 because it’s not the best tuna that I’ve eaten.

Bonefish (Dockyard)
Service-1
Food- 4
Atmosphere- 4
Nice outside seating area that looks over towards the harbor/cruise ships but the service was so poor (the only poor service that we had anywhere on the island) that by the time we got our food I could have cared less about eating it. It’s a shame because I think they actually have good food.

Tio Pepe
Service- 4
Food- 4
Atmosphere- 4
We ate lunch here after exploring some of the south shore beaches. The pizza was really tasty and again you can sit outside.

The Hog Penny
Service- 4
Food- 4
Atmosphere- 3
Again, it was just lunch so I just had soup and salad. My husband had a great local fish sandwich. It’s kind of tight inside but seems to be very popular among locals and tourists.

Overall, we had great food and great service. I didn’t give a lot of 5s because I figure it has to be about the best of that particular item that you’ve ever eaten to earn the 5. We might not have went to Bermuda’s very best restaurants since we had Brennan along but certainly we had great food maybe not quite as good as some of the food we’ve eating in Turks and Caicos but still very, very enjoyable dining experiences! By the way, other restaurants recommended by my Mom's friend that we didn't get to try were the Paraquet, White Horse, and Pickled Onion.

The one thing which was a little bit of a negative for me was the inability to rent a car. I really like to have a car to go exploring at my will. Since we had Brennan along we couldn’t rent mopeds so we had to rely on the public bus or taxis. The bus was fairly convenient most of the time and it was nice that they had this system in place for tourists (and locals) to use. A few times we had to wait a little while and one day the entire bus system was shut down for several hours for a meeting. It was usually easy to come by a taxi no matter where we were, fares can get a little expensive but we figured that if we had been anywhere else we would have rented a car which would have been around $500 for the week.

We took a glass bottom boat tour on the Reef Explorer. It didn’t meet our expectations but I guess were naïve in what we expected. We thought that by taking it that B would really like it because he would get to see a lot of different kinds of fish. This was not the case. We saw some turtles which was neat and then through the glass bottom we saw corals and basically only one type of fish which were silver fish (not sure of the actual name). They gave us bread to feed the silver fish as well. I wish we had just spent the morning on the beach relaxing instead. The tour guides were very nice and did provide good info about the island and certainly it was a pretty boat ride.

On the boat...

This is the kind of fish that we saw

Overall, I absolutely loved Bermuda and hope to return. You can’t beat a 2 hour direct flight (especially with a small child) and ending up in paradise. It’s so nice to be greeted by such warm and friendly locals as well. What a wonderful place...truly “bermudaful”….we highly recommend this island to all!

One last thing…I was really worried about the weather because before we left because sources said to expect low 70s and rainy but we had absolutely perfect weather. It was sunny and warm enough that you wanted to get into the water to cool off at times. The ocean water was a little chilly but after a couple of minutes you got used to it and it was fine.