So, as I’ve said here and elsewhere, I’ve been to Bermuda twice before. In 1987, my parents and I, plus two friends, did the most amazing thing… we sailed to Bermuda from Maryland. I’ll have to write about that trip in detail at some point, it was fantastic (although somewhat grueling). I’d never ocean-sailed before, and – surprise – you don’t stop at night – which means you need to have night watches. Usually, if the wind and weather don’t change, it just means you keep the boat pointed in the same direction and that’s it. Mom and I usually did 12:00-4:00, and I’d listen to my walkman or such. Anyway, the trip over should have taken about a week, but a day or so out of port, our engine broke down (not a problem for a sailboat, right?) and then we were becalmed for several days – no wind and no engine to switch to – which meant it actually took about 10 days to get there.

Also, at some point, just a day or so before we arrived, rough seas caused a kettle of boiling water to fly across the cabin and spray my dad’s legs, burning him quite thoroughly. We bandaged him up as best we could, and if it had been really bad, we could have called for help, but as it was, we finished our sail. We pulled into the St. George’s custom dock (which I saw again just yesterday), too late in the day to actually go through customs, but the officials let us take my dad to the hospital. He was basically fine, but they did the bandages right and he looked like a mummy from the waist down.

Then we spent about four days in Bermuda, living on the boat, while the marina fixed the engine for us. That was when we did the country pretty thoroughly, renting scooters and such. It was a blast. And it took us a week to sail back.

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The second trip was with Charles in 2006, and while it was a nice long weekend, it wasn’t a great trip. Our hotel had lost our reservation, a transit strike prevented us from touring the eastern end on our second day, and so on. On reflection, I realize that’s one of the few vacations that I took care of planning instead of him, and didn’t have nearly the eye for detail that he does, and that’s probably why so many things didn’t go so well and he probably was really holding back from getting super pissed off at me. But it was still very pleasant.

Anyway, on this trip, the ship would only be in port for about seven hours or so, and I really wanted to go to St. Georges, since C and I hadn’t managed to get out there in 2006. But St. George’s is literally on the exact opposite end of (the admittedly-small) country from the cruise ship docks, and the ferry that would have taken me straight from Dockside to St. G doesn’t run on Saturday. So, I’d done a lot of plotting and planning and figured if I didn’t dawdle, I’d have time to take the ferry to Hamilton, then bus the rest of the way, enough to at least walk around and have lunch.

(I was, of course, worried about the very real possibility that if my travel somehow got all screwed up, I might miss the boat’s departure. So that was a fun theme all day, as I kept my social media buddies abreast of Eric’s great race.)

Got up quite early, got my stuff together and cleaned up, went up to the cafeteria for a very simple breakfast, and was ready to go when they opened the gangways. Of course the whole boat was trying to get out of the same gangway, but at some point a cruise worker came up to us (right by me, which was hugely lucky) to say “the other gangway is empty, some of you come this way” and suddenly I was like first in line to get out the other way.

Bobbled my way around until I found the visitor’s center, and bought a one-day transit pass. Then got in line with everyone else to take the ferry to Hamilton, which is a pleasant and short ride – except for the family with the screaming children right nearby.

Off the ferry – I’d reviewed my blog posts from 2006 and remembered kind of where the Hamilton bus station was, but used Google Maps to really find it. And got right on the 11 bus, which is what I wanted. The bus ride was really pleasant – I’d remembered this vaguely, but the bus is really the way to go, you see all sorts of things, they’re air conditioned and (depending on the line) often run frequently. And Bermuda is beautiful and you could see everything and it was a lovely day. And I got to St. George’s about 10:30. I’d thought the bus would stop at the town’s square, but it went up this hill through an industrial neighborhood and stopped there. Oop, should have gotten off one stop earlier… the bus driver told me I could just take the next bus back down, but I decided to walk, it was only about 10 minutes.

Got to King’s Square, walked around, took some pictures of the custom house and some other quaint stuff (and figured out that the “St. George’s Marina” was not where we’d stayed for 4 days in 1987, and never did find it, although didn’t spend a lot of time on that project). Went to the visitor’s center, walked around the shops, looked at t-shirts. One of the few memories I have specifically about St. George’s from 1987 was going into a posh English clothing store and buying a really nice blazer. That clothing store is still there! and I recognized it right away, so that was very cool.

I stopped in at the White Horse (Bermuda’s oldest pub!) for lunch – they sat me out on the water, and that was very nice. I had an apple/walnut salad with added ‘wahoo’ – how often do you get to eat wahoo, which is either a fish or filets from UVa grads.

I’d wanted to take the #3 bus back, which would have gone on a more southerly route and allowed me to see more of the country, but that damn Saturday schedule – I would have had to go to Grotto Bay and wait around for the top of the hour, and I just didn’t think I could chance the time. So another #11 bus back to Hamilton.

I was doing great on time and everything was working according to plan. I had plenty of time to take the bus back from Hamilton, rather than the ferry, and so I did. Unfortunately the bus filled up right away with other cruise ship passengers, more and more as we passed various beaches, so that the bus was completely full, including the aisles. There was one very energetic and loud 10-year old sitting up front with his grandma (?) while his parents were further down the bus, by me. Little asshole spent the whole bus trip standing on his chair, swinging from the stand-up handhold, talking very loudly and commenting on everything. It never occurred to any of his adults to tell him to sit down until like 45 minutes into the trip. Can’t wait to see what this kid grows up into.

Anyway, I’d stupidly moved seats at some point and was on the not-water side of the bus, and because there were so many standees, I missed a lot of the pretty stuff out of the left side of the bus. Oh, well. So that was a super-loud, obnoxious ride, but it wasn’t the bus’s fault, and we got in in plenty of time.

This was my route. The sad-face part is the #3 bus route I wanted to take back from St. George’s, but didn’t.

Once in Dockside, I took a picture of the big anchors outside the Clock Tower mall, where C and I had taken a picture on our 2006 trip (when, I think, it was not yet a mall).

and then did a bit of shopping. I’d had it with people by this point, so didn’t spend a lot of time, but did buy a t-shirt. Which the label said was XXL and my eyes said was ‘too small’. My eyes turned out to be correct. I can be a dummy sometimes, oh well. What I really wanted was the shirt I’d bought in 2006, which had an old-timey map of Bermuda on it, but I couldn’t find that one.

Got back on the boat in plenty of time, and headed up to the cafeteria, where everyone else had the same idea… got some cake (OK, a lot of cake) and coffee. Then hung out on my balcony, which looked out on Dockside and had a great view of the fort, until we pulled away.