Cruising to Bermuda - Part 1

Baltimore

I’m not sure why it took us so long to get to Bermuda. Maybe because it’s a one-port cruise and Ron and I like more ports. Or maybe because Ron usually wants to go south – the hotter the better. :-)  But then last year Ron mentioned that we should plan a trip to Bermuda and I said “Sure!” I’m always ready to try out a new destination. We chose a 5-day cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Grandeur of the Seas and invited Mama to join us. Aunt Susan was also planning to come, but when she had to cancel, Mary decided to take her place.

On the morning of the cruise, we flew into Baltimore on an early flight and waited about half an hour for Mama’s plane to arrive so that we could share a taxi. When we got to the port at 10:30, the boarding process had already begun, and we were soon onboard and exploring the ship. Mary arrived an hour later and met us in the Windjammer Café for lunch.

Centrum

R Bar

Casino Royale

At 1, the cabins were ready, so we headed to Deck 8 to drop off our carry-on items. We had booked two junior suites a few doors apart from each other. The cabins were very roomy with a love seat and two chairs in the sitting area and a bathtub in the bathroom. There were tons of nooks and crannies to store things – so much that I kept forgetting where we had put everything. But for some reason, our cabin had a floor-to-ceiling pole at the foot of the bed! Many jokes ensued. :-)  I discovered the disadvantage to the pole later when I kept walking into it in the middle of the night on the way back from the bathroom. Thank goodness it was padded.

Why is this pole here??

Mary’s suitcase was already waiting in front of her door when we got to the cabins. Ron and I spotted and retrieved our bags from a luggage cart down the hall. That left only Mama’s suitcase to be delivered. It seemed strange that her bag wasn’t with ours since we had boarded together, but it was still early. It wasn’t until her bag still hadn’t appeared by sail away at 4 o’clock that I started to worry. What if it had gotten lost??

Ron, Mary and I watched the sail away from the sports deck. About an hour after leaving Baltimore, we passed under the Key Bridge, very near the spot where Francis Scott Key had penned the words to our national anthem. I love bridges – driving over them, sailing under them. Sailing under a bridge on a cruise ship is especially cool. The top of the ship was so close to the bridge that it looked like we were going to hit it, but of course we didn’t. Once we passed the bridge, Mary decided to try out the rock climbing wall. I knew she would have fun with that. Mama jokes that if there’s something to climb, Mary will climb it. After a couple of climbs, we went back down to the cabin to check on Mama. She finally had her suitcase! As it turned out, she’d had to go down to the “naughty room” to pick it up because it had been flagged by security for containing a contraband item. The item – a pair of scissors. They were a fairly large pair of scissors, but I guess security decided they were safe enough and let Mama keep them. I always thought that if anyone was going to be called to the “naughty room”, it would be me and Ron. I never would have guessed it would be Mama! :-)

Francis Scott Key Bridge

Chesapeake Bay Bridge

Dinner that night was in the Great Gatsby Dining Room, the two-deck main restaurant with traditional seating on the lower deck and My Time Dining on the upper deck. I thought it was one of the prettiest cruise ship dining rooms I had seen, with white and blue chairs and a sweeping staircase. We were seated at a table for four right by the window where we could see the sky and sea. Michael and Kevin, our wait team, were excellent and kept the food courses coming at just the right pace. Yay, escargot was in the “classic” section of the menu which meant it was available every night! Mary and I decided we would be taking full advantage of that option.

Great Gatsby Dining Room

After dinner, Mama headed for bed while Mary, Ron and I played cards in our cabin. We didn’t stay up long. We had been up since 3:30 that morning and it had been a long but lovely day.

Sea Day

I dozed until 6:30 when I decided I’d better get up and get some food and Bonine in my stomach. Now that we had left Chesapeake Bay and were out in the Atlantic, the rocking of the ship was much more pronounced, and I didn’t want to get seasick. We met Mama and Mary for breakfast in the Windjammer and then everyone went their separate ways – Mama to the church service and Mary to work out at the gym. I decided it would be a good time to hide some of my “cruising ducks”. I heard about Cruising Ducks for the first time right before the cruise. Like the painted rock groups on Facebook, you hide a rubber duckie somewhere on your ship and if someone finds it, they can choose to keep it or re-hide it. (For more about Cruising Ducks, here is a good article.) I had brought six ducks and hid the first three. Although adults seem to love finding the ducks as much as kids, I tried to put mine in low places where they would be easier for children to spot. Unfortunately, there were already a lot of people out and about, so I had to be stealthy to avoid anyone noticing what I was doing.

At 10:30, it was time for our sushi-making class in the Izumi Japanese Restaurant. I was really looking forward to this. Mary and I had signed up for the class before the cruise while Ron and Mama planned to observe, but after we were all seated, Mama changed her mind and decided to take the class too! We all donned hats and gloves and then the sushi chef walked us through the process of making four different types of sushi. We made tempura shrimp and California rolls, shrimp nigiri and tuna temaki (the kind that looks like an ice cream cone). After the class, we got to eat our finished products. My favorite was the tempura shrimp roll. Yum!

Izumi

The afternoon was sunny and beautiful and there were lots of kids sloshing around in the main pool, which had turned into a wave pool from the ship’s rocking. It was funny to see everyone in the pool getting swept from one side to the other by the waves. The motion of the ship had noticeably increased, and ominously, the dreaded barf bags appeared on all the stairwells. Thank goodness my Bonine was holding up! Despite the waves, the rock climbing wall was open so Mary did another round of climbs.

After the rock climbing, Mary, Ron and I went down to the casino. We each had a $2 promo to use on the slot machines. Mary chose a machine that looked interesting but turned out to be overly complicated (not to mention defective). First, we couldn’t figure out how to play the game, then the buttons quit working, and then the machine wouldn’t give Mary her sea pass card back! We had to call over a casino worker to retrieve the card. Ron and I chose more traditional slot machines but quickly lost our $2 credits. I have to say, I liked it much better when Royal Caribbean gave you $5 match play cards. Slots are just not my thing. Not that I had better luck at Black Jack. I lost most of my daily gambling allowance, but I did remember to keep a $1 chip for my collection.
 
That night was formal night. At dinner we requested the same table we’d had the night before since we loved the location and our wait team. I was surprised that lobster wasn’t on the menu, but my beef carpaccio was excellent and we all enjoyed the Grand Marnier souffle. Mama headed off to bed afterwards while Mary, Ron and I went to see the headliner show. The headliner, Scott Record, was a comedian, singer and impressionist and he was hilarious! His version of NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” had me cracking up. I also loved his impression of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” the way it sounds on an old juke box, complete with all the hisses and skips. It was really the best show I’ve seen on a cruise in a long time.

When we got back to our cabin, we found some bad news. The Cruise Compass for the next day said that the expected time for disembarkation in Bermuda was 2 o’clock! Since the ship was supposed to dock at 1, we had planned to take the 2:15 ferry to Hamilton and from there take a taxi to the Crystal Caves. But if we couldn’t get off the ship till 2, catching the 2:15 ferry might be a problem. The next ferry to Hamilton wasn’t until 4 o’clock which wouldn’t get us to the caves in time for their last tour. Another option was to take the 2:45 ferry to St George and taxi from there to the caves but we still might miss the last tour. Or we could change plans completely and walk around St George but since I hadn’t done any research on St George before the cruise, I didn’t really want to do that. Finally, we decided we’d get off the ship as quickly as we could but if we missed the ferry, we’d just take a taxi to the caves. It would cost more but at least we had a backup plan. I felt bad for Mama though, because she was going to take the ferry with us and go shopping in Hamilton.  We would have to tell her in the morning.

Bermuda

When we met for breakfast, we gave Mama the bad news. She was disappointed that she might not be able to catch the ferry with us but decided to sign up for the Hamilton Sightseeing Tour instead. When we went down to the Shore Excursion Desk, the tour was sold out for that afternoon, so she bought a ticket for the following day. I felt a lot better now that we all had a Plan B.

We passed the morning hiding a couple more ducks and walking the promenade deck. Slowly Bermuda came into view. We approached from the east side, passing St David’s lighthouse and then Fort Catherine in St George. The water turned a bright turquoise blue and we could see hills dotted with white-roofed houses in pastel colors – pink, coral, pale yellow, light blue and seafoam. I loved the colors!

The ship docked at the Royal Navy Dockyard right at 1 o’clock, and we got our things together so we could disembark as soon as they would let us. At 1:30, we decided we’d waited long enough and headed for the gangway. One crew member was telling people that they needed a tour ticket to disembark but another one was waving everyone through, so we kept right on walking. And then we were off the ship! We were going to make the ferry after all. A dock worker directed us to a kiosk where we could buy ferry tokens, and we boarded the ferry with plenty of time to spare.

Royal Navy Dockyard

The ride to Hamilton was quick (maybe 20 minutes) and picturesque. Once we got off the ferry, we detoured to Queen Elizabeth Park so we could see the moon gate at the park’s entrance. Moon gates, circular gates in a wall, can be found all over Bermuda and are said to bring good luck to those who pass through them. Seeing a moon gate was definitely on my bucket list. Before the trip, I’d researched where they were located and was happy to find one such a short walk away. This one was especially pretty - one of the oldest in Bermuda with wrought iron doors.

moon gate at Queen Elizabeth Park

After the moon gate stop, we found a taxi stand on Front Street where several cabs were waiting. Our taxi driver was a nice, soft-spoken gentleman who gave us a mini-tour on the way to the caves, pointing out various sites. We got to the caves just in time to catch the 3:30 tour. Once everyone in our group was assembled, our tour guide, Malik, herded us into the cave entrance and down the 85 steep, damp stone steps. We passed the original entrance to the caves, which consisted of a 65-foot climb down a rope ladder. Eek! I was glad we didn’t have to use that entrance! At the bottom of the stairs, the cavern opened into a long room lined with incredible formations of limestone. There were large pillars and delicate fingers as thin as drinking straws. A floating boardwalk crossed over the crystal-clear water, so clear that it was hard to tell the reflections of the stalactites from the stalagmites rising up under the surface. Malik told us that the water came from the Atlantic Ocean. Only the top two inches was fresh water, dripping slowly down through the earth above.

At the end of the boardwalk, we all halted while Malik told us the story of how the caves were discovered. In 1907, two boys looking for their lost cricket ball, climbed down into a hole and found the caves. As you can imagine, at this point the boys were less interested in finding their ball than in finding a way back out. After Malik told us this story, he turned off all the lights in the caves so we could experience what complete darkness was like. We couldn’t even see our hands in front of our faces. It was a little eerie but very cool.

entering the Crystal Caves

When the tour was over, we crossed the road to the Swizzle Inn, Bermuda’s oldest pub. The Swizzle Inn is famous for being the birthplace of the rum swizzle, a yummy Bermudian drink made with Gosling’s rum and orange and pineapple juices. Mary, Ron and I shared a half-jug of swizzle and a fish sandwich. Then we went to Bailey’s Bay Ice Cream Parlour for ice cream. This was on Mary’s bucket list since she hadn’t had a chance to try the ice cream on her trip last year and had been quite disappointed about that.

Mary finally gets her ice cream

We’d planned to take a taxi back to Hamilton but there were no taxis around, so Mary suggested that we walk up the road to the Grotto Bay Resort where she and Chris had stayed since there were usually taxis waiting there. I thought this was a good idea since it gave us a chance to check out Grotto Bay and see if we wanted to stay there on our next trip. Yes, I was already planning our next trip! :-)  We didn’t find any taxis at Grotto Bay, but the front desk clerk said it would probably be just as fast to catch a bus from the bus stop right across the street. A quick look at the bus route map told us that either the #10 or #11 bus would get us where we wanted to go. By the time we’d figured that out, a #11 bus was already pulling up and we hopped on.
 
Back in Hamilton, we ate dinner at Flanagan’s Irish Pub on Front Street (fish and chips for Ron, Bermuda fish chowder for me) and finished just in time to catch the 7:30 ferry back to the Dockyard. Mary decided to explore the port area a little more while Ron and I went back to the ship and watched the last of the sunset from deck. We found Mama who told us that she was glad she hadn’t tried to go to Hamilton with us. She wasn’t feeling well so she’d stayed close to the ship, visiting the National Museum of Bermuda and the Bermuda Arts Centre, and having coffee in one of the coffee shops. She’d even gotten to see some of her beloved sheep in one of the courtyards.

Ron and I went on to bed since we needed to up early for our tour in the morning. From our balcony, we could see the flashing light on Gibb’s Hill Lighthouse. We would be climbing it the next day and I was very excited!

continued on Part 2