Our final full day in Bermuda began with a big breakfast while we made plans to head to the beach!
Oatmeal forever ❤
Although we had visited the beach briefly on our day of scooter touring, we hadn’t really gotten a chance to relax in the pink sand or enjoy the cool waves. We decided to spend the day at Horseshoe Bay, one of Bermuda’s top rated and most beautiful beaches.
Once we arrived, we discovered that the beach definitely lived up to it’s reputation and was thankfully not very crowded.
The beach was very wide and peppered with wonderful rock formations that created quiet little coves to explore.
Robert and I walked up and down the beach, stopping for plenty of photo opp’s and to admire the “pink” sand.
The sand DOES have a slightly pink hue, thanks to tiny red organisms that grow under the coral reefs and get washed to shore.
When we made our way back to our towels, the rest of our group was hanging in the waves!
I of course had forgotten my swim shirt (bummer) and was nervous about getting too much sun on my back so Robert and I decided to climb some of the tall rocks for a great vantage point instead.
Our second full day in Bermuda started with breakfast at our hotel followed by a ferry into town. Our hotel provided a complimentary ferry across the bay into Hamilton which was very convenient.
Once we made it into town we got our bearings and explored a few cute shops on the way to the Hog Penny Pub.
The Hog Penny held a special significance to my brother-in-law since it was where his parents first met many years ago. His father was in the military and his mother was on vacation. They met at the pub, fell in love and have refused to return to Bermuda since for fear that it wouldn’t live up to their wonderful memories. So romantic!
Of course we all wanted to check it out after that story so we decided to stop in for lunch.
I decided to try the Bermuda Fish Chowder. The chowder is considered the national dish of Bermuda so of course every restaurant on the island puts their own unique spin on it. It’s a tomato based stew with large chunks of fish and veggies, typically seasoned with black rum and hot pepper sauce.
It was delicious and my aunt who had tried the dish at lunch the previous day claimed that the Hog Penny version was much better.
After lunch we headed to the harbor to meet the captain of the pontoon boat we had chartered for the afternoon.
Hi Blog! I’ve missed you! No posts from me in over two weeks…yikes! Let’s remedy that immediately.
Does anyone ever go on a vacation and then feel like you need a vacation from your vacation to catch back up? Surly I’m not alone in this? Bermuda was REALLY wonderful, but I hit the ground running full speed as soon as we returned. Between a sinus infection, lots of work to catch up on, throwing an engagement party for two friends, planning an upcoming wedding shower for two different friends (wedding season much?), hosting football parties (Go Tigers!) and trying to catch back up on laundry, cleaning, Renly, friends, LIFE….it’s been busy. But enough about being busy because really, aren’t we all? Let’s hop right into the fabulous, beautiful Bermuda recap!
Now, before you start thinking that I have some fantastic, jet-setting lifestyle that allows me to travel midweek on a whim, let me remind you why we took this trip. Robert and his sister (my sister in law) are exactly 10 years and one day apart. That means this September, they turned 30 and 40 respectively. Two pretty big milestone birthdays! Then to top it all off, our Aunt Vanessa turned another number ending in 0 (but we celebrated it as 25 😉 the day after Robert! Make that three milestone birthdays, three days in a row! We decided that three special birthdays in a row deserved a big celebration, and Bermuda was the winning destination!
We flew out of Atlanta early Wednesday morning and arrived in Bermuda around 2:00. We checked into our hotel, the Newstead Belmont Hills in Paget Parish, which overlooked the city of Hamilton.
Bermuda is divided into “Parishes” rather than districts or counties. Hamilton, across from our hotel is the center of the island and capital of Bermuda.
The view from the hotel was beautiful and our rooms were spotless. We shared a two bedroom condo with my sister and brother in law. The bedrooms were on either side of a common area and kitchen and each had their own bathroom and private porch. It was very spacious and felt more like a private room than a shared condo.
Fresh off the plane
My sister-in-law had a friend from college, Belcario, who is a Bermuda native and he stopped by our hotel after we were settled to welcome us. After a few glasses of wine to kick off the vacation we decided to head into town for dinner.
It was my sister-in-law’s birthday so she chose an Italian restaurant in Hamilton, La Trattoria. Belcario joined us for dinner and happily answered all of our questions about the island while we stuffed ourselves with pasta and pizza.
We decided to call it a night after dinner so we could make a full day of it on Thursday, Robert’s birthday!
We woke up bright and early Thursday morning and enjoyed breakfast at our hotel before heading to Oleander Cycles to rent scooters for the day, per the birthday boy’s request! Every family in Bermuda is only allowed to have one car, so scooters are the main mode of transportation. We quickly learned that the Bermudians are either brave or crazy (or both) the way they weave in an out of traffic and whip around blind corners on those things!
Breakfast foods for breakfast, breakfast foods for lunch, breakfast foods for dinner. These are a few of my favorite things.
I have long waxed poetic on this blog about my love of all things breakfast. I could eat breakfast foods all day long, and some days I actually do. Like today. I had a spinach smoothie for breakfast (spinach means its basically a salad so this could technically be lunch..right?), oatmeal for lunch (Which exploded in the work microwave..bummer), and last but not least I’ll be dining on the rest of this delicious frittata for dinner tonight.
Oatmeal for lunch typically means I’m completely out of groceries and need to make a trip to the store. While I am currently out of groceries, I will not be making a trip to the store any time soon since we leave for Bermuda on Wednesday! I talked about this trip on the blog many posts ago when it was first planned and seemed forever away… well, it’s finally here! Between treadmill falls (which is almost totally healed, hooray!) and a few tough weeks at work, I am more than ready for a few days away with Robert (and the rest of my family too of course :). My aunt and sister-in-law chose the location and accommodations and have done the majority of the planning thus far. They are both fun and have great taste so instead of going into my typical “plan everything to the minute” vacation mode, I’m looking forward to just going along for the ride and seeing what they have up their sleeves! If they need any suggestions once we get there I did happen to find this fun helmet diving activity on TripAdvisor…
I’m not sure if her face is screaming “This is TERRIBLE!” or “This is AWESOME!” but either way, I’m in.
Ok, so back to the frittata. Wasting food is a personal pet peeve so when we are headed out of town I try to use up everything perishable in the fridge before we go. What better to do with random ingredients than make a frittata? I mean EVERYTHING goes with eggs, am I right or am I right?
Atastytrip 