Escaping to Bermuda - June 2018 Trip Report!

[tawaik]

Enjoying your review. Adding to my excitement for my trip in September of 2019! I love the Escape and can't wait to sail her again.

[EmeraldCoastCruisers]

I cant wait for the rest of this trio report. Bermuda is our favorite cruise we have ever done. Thanks for posting

 

 

 

We’ve always done a Caribbean cruise (I’ve done Alaska prior to getting married). Really looking into a Bermuda cruise now.

 

 

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[tatibus0913]

Love this review! I'll be going to Bermuda the same week next year.

 

Thanks Jessica. This is how I sometimes find cruises that I want to do or not. So thank you for taking the time.

 

Thanks for following along!

[tatibus0913]

Really enjoying your review. We leave Sunday on the Escape, reading all this and seeing the pictures is awesome.

 

Thank you for sharing all these details and of course we understand that you have a life outside cruise critic. Have a good weekend and looking forward to your next review. We just arrived in Miami from the Netherlands. We will depart on our cruise on Sunday. Yeah!

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

 

Hope you both have wonderful cruises!!

[tatibus0913]

Your posts are a complete joy to read, thank you. Your food photos are fantastic although exactly 120 days from our next cruise (just booked dining, yay) I am going a little mad craving all my favourite things, 6am uk time and weirdly and sadly nowhere to get yummy wings ;-)

 

The food photos always make me hungry, even as I'm posting this!

[tatibus0913]

Happy weekend. Enjoy. It’s Canada Day long weekend here and we’re having a heat wave!

 

Happy (belated) Canada day! It's so hot here as well!

[tatibus0913]

Enjoying your review. Adding to my excitement for my trip in September of 2019! I love the Escape and can't wait to sail her again.

 

Thanks for following along!

[tatibus0913]

We’ve always done a Caribbean cruise (I’ve done Alaska prior to getting married). Really looking into a Bermuda cruise now.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

 

We've never done a Caribbean cruise, but I'm thinking that's next! I love the Bermuda ones because you spend three days there, which gives you a lot of time to see the island.

[tatibus0913]

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! I am finally unpacked! :D

 

So here's what I'm thinking for this week - I have our second day in Bermuda ready to go, and tomorrow I can probably do the last one. As many of you know, the 4th is on Wednesday so we will be celebrating that (we got engaged on the 4th of July five years ago!). I should be able to wrap everything up by the end of this week, including the photos of the menus and the scans of the Freestyle dailies. That's the plan anyways!

[aubreyc1988]

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! I am finally unpacked! :D

 

So here's what I'm thinking for this week - I have our second day in Bermuda ready to go, and tomorrow I can probably do the last one. As many of you know, the 4th is on Wednesday so we will be celebrating that (we got engaged on the 4th of July five years ago!). I should be able to wrap everything up by the end of this week, including the photos of the menus and the scans of the Freestyle dailies. That's the plan anyways!

 

really excited for the review!

[tatibus0913]

Thursday, June 21st: Bermuda

 

We woke up early to another beautiful day in Bermuda!

 

 

 

The day before, we had put the breakfast room service tag on the door. We ordered the complimentary continental breakfast to be delivered between 6:30am and 7:00am, and they brought it around 6:40am, which was perfect. We ordered fruit, pastries and coffee. The chocolate croissants are my favorite!

 

 

Before we left for the cruise, I had arranged taxi pick up for 7:30am to bring us to Somerset Bridge Watersports. I wasn’t sure if taxis would be there that early, so I wanted to make sure our transportation was all set. I had contacted Bermuda Island Taxi, and they told me that there would be a taxi with our name on a sign at the end of the pier. That sounded great so I filled out the form on their website and provided my credit card to hold the reservation.

We left the ship at 7:20am and went outside to wait for the taxi. Well, it never arrived. We saw other taxis there, but none of them were for us. Nobody tried to contact me at all so at 7:38am, we went with another taxi. Fortunately, my credit card was never charged, but it was added stress since I thought out transportation was all set.

 

We were supposed to be at Somerset Bridge Watersports by 7:45am and we were a few minutes late due to our taxi issues. One of the nice thing about Somerset is that they pay one way for your taxi fare, so they came outside and paid the taxi driver directly. We went inside, and talked to our guide, who told us that it was just us on the early tour. He also said that it was really windy and the water was rough in some spots so he’d have to modify the route that we would be taking, but we’d still see everything. We did some safety stuff and then we were off!

 

We would follow our guide for a while, and then stop so that he could talk about the area that we were in, and that was when I could take photos.

 

The Somerset Bridge, which is the world’s smallest drawbridge

One of the bays

 

[tatibus0913]

I finally managed to take a photo of a turtle!

 

 

 

Our guide took a couple of photos of us on the jetskis

 

 

 

Then, we headed out to the HMS Vixen and the water was really rough. He gave us bread to feed the fish, who went crazy!

 

 

After a little bit, we headed back to the marina.

 

We really enjoyed jetskiing and I’d highly recommend Somerset Bridge Watersports. The guide was great and the jetskis were in great condition!

 

We were able to flag down a taxi outside of the marina, and headed back to the Dockyard.

[tatibus0913]

We arrived back to the Dockyard around 10:00am, and went to our room for a quick change of clothes for our trip to St. George.

 

Here is the schedule for the free NCL ferry.

 

And this is the Bermuda ferry schedule.

 

 

We wanted to take the 11:15am ferry over to St. George. We could see the NCL ferry area from our balcony, so we could monitor the line. Within 20 minutes or so, there was a lot of people waiting. We joined the line at 10:30 am and it just kept growing. The ferry returned, and they started boarding at 11:00am. At that point, they had closed off the ferry area and were no longer allowing people in. The ferry left exactly at 11:15am. Word of advice - get in line at least 45 minutes before the published time. Maybe earlier if you’re taking the first ferry of the day.

 

The ferry ride took 50 minutes, and it was nice to be relaxing in the air conditioning!

 

Once we were in St. George, we turned right to head to the town center.

 

 

 

[tatibus0913]

We decided that we would stop and have lunch before heading to the beach. We came across Wahoo’s Bistro, which had outdoor seating and was reasonably priced. We were seated right against the railing, which was perfect and we had a great view during lunch.

 

 

 

 

We ordered rum swizzles, a burger and fish and chips.

 

 

 

 

Everything was seriously good, even the coleslaw, which I don’t normally like. Our server was also really sweet.

[tatibus0913]

We headed towards King’s Square to find a taxi to Tobacco Bay.

 

It took almost 15 minutes to find a ride. I’m not sure if it was because it was a little later in the afternoon, but every taxi that arrived refused to take us because they wanted a bigger fare. Eventually, we were talking to taxi driver who was booked on an island tour (his clients were still eating lunch) but told us about gypsy cars that would take us to the beach for $3.00 per person. It sounded a little weird, but then another couple arrived also looking to go to the beach. The nice taxi driver flagged down one of these gypsy cars for the four of us and we were off.

 

We made it to Tobacco Bay and it was packed. We had been to this beach a few years ago, and had a great time. It hadn’t been that busy when we went. Obviously it has become a lot more popular. It seemed like all of the beach chairs were on top of one another. There was also a floating volleyball court and I think a large duck or swan in the water. Those were definitely not there when we went a couple of years ago. We found a place to put our towels down and headed into the water.

 

View of the beach from the water. New floating volleyball court and duck/swan are off to the right.

 

The water was amazing and so much warmer than the beaches that we live near.

 

 

 

We had goggles, but didn’t see too much. The bottom was also really cloudy from everyone swimming, but I managed to take a few pictures

 

 

 

We swam for a little while and then headed back to our towels, which were now covered in sand since they were next to the walkway by the bar/food area. We stayed until we were reasonably dried off and then packed up our stuff. It’s a great beach but it’s small and there were a ton of people there.

 

We had talked about walking over to Achilles Bay Beach or St. Catherine's Beach, but we were tired. I think if this had been planned out differently, we would've maybe spent the day there or explored the other beaches, and we would've enjoyed it more. Regardless, it was great to be in water!

 

It was about 2:30pm when we were packing up, so we figured we would walk back down to King's Square, do a little shopping and then take the 3:45pm Bermuda ferry (not the free NCL one). As we were leaving, another one of those gypsy cars appeared and offered to take us down the hill. We took him up on it, and he drove us all the way the NCL ferry! We were able to make the 3:00pm ferry, which was much appreciated!

[tempus137]

Hog Penny Pub is one of my favorite places to eat in Bermuda (love the Shepherds Pie).

 

 

Did you get (like almost 100% of the visitors) to the Swizzle Inn? Supposedly that's where the Rum Swizzle was invented.

[tatibus0913]

We arrived back at the Dockyard and decided to go over to the Clocktower Mall, which we hadn’t been to yet. It’s a bunch of different shops so we walked through and enjoyed air conditioning.

 

 

We went back to the Escape to get ready for dinner, and had treats in our room again!

 

 

We got ready and headed to Food Republic for dinner.

 

 

Ancho pancho drink

 

 

Lamb chops

 

Sushi - I don’t remember the name but it was shrimp tempura with spicy tuna

[tatibus0913]

Crispy salmon sushi (I think that’s the name)

 

 

Kimchi fried rice

 

 

Dumplings

 

 

Steak

 

 

Korean fried chicken

 

And a beautiful sunset to go with dinner

 

 

This was hands down our favorite meal on the ship. We definitely ordered and ate too much! I didn’t love the sauce on the steak, but the rest was amazing!

[tatibus0913]

After dinner, we headed to the Atrium. We caught the end of In-ovation’s set. NCL really does hire amazing performers.

 

Then, it was time for the Perfect Couple Game Show, hosted by the Cruise Director, Alvin.

 

The show was really funny and Alvin did a great job hosting it. He had a lot of energy but wasn’t over the top.

 

We had some time to spare, so we went over to the mojito bar where I had a ginger mojito. It was delicious.

 

 

We headed to the main theater for the 11:00pm show, where both comedians were performing. It was 18+ and no reservations required.

 

 

At that point, we switched to Coronas, because they’re basically like water (lol).

 

 

We had a great time at the show. Both comedians were great! We had already seen Peter Banachowski, but he had different material for the late show. Warren B. Hall was also incredibly funny!

By the end of the show, we were exhausted and headed back to our room to get some much needed sleep!

 

[tatibus0913]

Hog Penny Pub is one of my favorite places to eat in Bermuda (love the Shepherds Pie).

 

 

Did you get (like almost 100% of the visitors) to the Swizzle Inn? Supposedly that's where the Rum Swizzle was invented.

 

We had a good time at Hog Penny!

 

And unfortunately, we didn't make it there. But we drank a lot of rum swizzles :D

[SolocruiserMA]

My partner Ed and I are in your Tobacco Bay Beach picture. Thanks for getting an unsctipted pic of us!

 

Glad you had fun! We did do.

 

Phil and Ed

[tatibus0913]

My partner Ed and I are in your Tobacco Bay Beach picture. Thanks for getting an unsctipted pic of us!

 

Glad you had fun! We did do.

 

Phil and Ed

 

That's so funny! We had a great time and loved the beautiful weather!

[Gershep]

Enjoying your review and your beautiful pictures. I love Bermuda and every time we visit we rent the jetskis from Somerset.

[Kmermaid]

We also ate at Wahoo in St. George, yummy fish and chips. You were smart to take the ride, we walked only to see the area between the town and the beach. Neat to see the churches and the houses though. Enjoying your review!

[tatibus0913]

Enjoying your review and your beautiful pictures. I love Bermuda and every time we visit we rent the jetskis from Somerset.

 

Thanks! We had a great time and would definitely do the jetski tour again!