Travel

One of the places I would love to go on Vacation is Bermuda. Not quite as hot as the rest of the Caribbean as it is 650 miles east of North Carolina, the main vacation season in Bermuda is just the opposite of the rest of the islands. Most of them have their main seasons from December through March but Bermuda is supposed to have it’s best weather in the summer time.

The Bermuda Islands or Somers Isles as they are also known are a British overseas territory, the oldest remaining in the Kingdom of Great Britain. There are 138 islands in a total area of about 20 square miles.

Photograph copyright Bermuda Ministry of Tourism & Transport

Bermuda’s population is somewhere around 65,000, about that of a small city. The weather in Bermuda is pretty temperate as well. The average summer time high in July and August are 85 degrees. May and June are 75 to 80, which is probably about the time I would want to go, although as I normally just want to hang out and drink beer January and February might just be the right time for me to go. Less crowds, less heat. Perfect, particularly if you want to walk everywhere.

From what I was reading about when to go to Bermuda, the off-season does sound pretty good to me particularly as the prices are much better, but this is also when most of the hotels and resorts do their major repairs and renovations. It wouldn’t be good to make reservations and then find out I was staying in the midst of a construction zone.

Everything I have read about Bermuda leads me to believe that the weather would be about what I am used to from Hilton Head, only slightly milder since you have the gulf stream going right through there. A perfect vacation spot in other words. I still haven’t given up on Key West in January but Bermuda is certainly sounding much better and it would be a shorter flight as well and since I hate flying with a passion, that’s always a bonus. It would give me an excuse to use that new camera too.

Technorati : Bermuda, Vacation

The wife will probably be going back to Hilton Head at least once more this year to visit her friend that lives there and we will most likely be visiting her when we go to Parris Island in September as well. At some point later this year, as soon as she sells her business as a matter of fact, she and her children will be moving to Cyprus. The only thing I know about Cyprus is that my brother flew through there on his way back from living in Israel back in the late eighties/early nineties, so I decided to look it up as I am sure to be hearing about it from the wife sooner or later.

According to wiki, Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean and one of the most popular destinations in the Mediterranean particularly among Europeans. It was a colony of Britain until 1960 and formed it’s own Commonwealth republic in 1961. The Republic of Cyprus has also been a member of the EU since 2004.

Judging from the picture above and the other ones that I have seen Cyprus is an extremely beautiful country and I wouldn’t mind visiting at some point. DialAFlight has cheap flights all over the world and right now I can get a flight to Cyprus from Heathrow Airport for around $900. Not too shabby, although I could probably fly into a different EU airport and get an even cheaper flight from them.

Technorati : Cyprus

I love going down to the Carolina and Georgia coast. Although we have been to several different places over the last few years for our vacations we always seem to return to the East Coast. While it’s not quite as warm as the gulf and the seas are a bit rougher, I really love the weather as well as all of the surroundings and people in the area. Next year I think that maybe I would like to go a bit farther north and go to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

I was looking at some different options for next year’s summer vacation for the kids. I want to set enough money aside to take them back to Disney, but one of the things I was considering is to get an Orlando rental home rather than staying in one of the resorts in the park. I just can’t decide. We had a really good time and I am kind of interested in the Tahitian resort that is pretty near the Magic Kingdom.

The kids would probably be happier staying in one of the resorts in the park, but my wallet likes the other option. I don’t know if next year will be the one though. Possibly the year after that. The youngest will be almost six by then and I think we will all enjoy it even more by then.

Damn. Although I have kept up somewhat, answered a few comments and emails for the most part I have spent the week ignoring them and enjoying myself. I’ve just gone through the list of emails, spam track-backs, comments, etc…What a job. Now I can get some stuff taken care of.

Have to go out shortly and return the rental car as well. The wife ran to Carrollton for awhile and is supposed to call me later and let me know when to meet.

Hopefully my car will be out of the shop today or tomorrow as well. It did end up being the starter, but I also asked him to go ahead and give me an oil change and tune-up as well. Now I just need to get the air fixed. Maybe in the next couple of weeks I can get that done. Riding in a car with no air sucks.

Monday we drove into the island around noon to go sightseeing and generally do touristy things that we don’t normally do while on vacation. First order of business was lunch, so we stopped at Coligny Plaza and had a bite at Steamers which I have reviewed in another post.

After lunch we decided to go check some things out. There are a couple of areas that were civil war area forts around. I knew there wouldn’t be much left but wanted to take some pics anyway and have a walk around.

There first two that we wanted to see were located near Mitchelville, named in honor of Union General Ormsby Mitchel. We visited the site of Fort Mitchel. All that is left is the earthen mounds that were the walls of the fort and the moat. There are some signs up showing how everything was situated and where it was all located. It was pretty cool visiting this historic site. The mosquitos were particularly bad around here so we didn’t stay very long. I did get some pictures which I will eventually post but my camera is such a piece of crap and with the humidity they are all slightly foggy as the previous pictures will attest. I may be able to clean them up a bit before I post them.

After we walked around there we drove a little ways down the street in hopes of looking at the Fort Howell ruins. They are located inside Palmetto Dunes, which is apparently a gated community. The asshole at the gate simply said that there were no historic sites there and wouldn’t let us in. Not rich looking enough I suppose. The fucking Hilton Head Chamber of Commerce needs to take the shit off the map if the communities aren’t going to let people in to see them. It was hot and humid so that aggravated my mood a bit I am sure.

We made good use of the Sea Pines pass that we had and drove down to the south end of the island after that where we wandered around the ruins of the Baynard plantation. Some of the tabby walls are still intact and I got some shots of them (a couple from my cell phone have already been posted). Once I get home and get time to mess with the photos I will re-post them and the others as well along with a brief history of the place. Tabby is made with sea shell, which is all I know about it right now. It’s pretty cool.

We left there and went back down to the lighthouse area again where we treated the kids to ice cream before heading back toward Coligny. We parked near the Art Cafe and walked down to the beach where we hung out for awhile. The wind was pretty strong so the waves were nice. We played there for a couple of hours before meeting up with our friend and having dinner at Steamers again.

I think we ended up getting back to Bluffton around 11 last night. I pretty much went straight to bed as I was slightly toasty and very tired from being in the sun all day.

As I said when I posted this morning I got up before everyone else. It wasn’t long however before everyone else crawled out of bed. Rather than make a trip to the beach, the wife wanted to go to the pool here at Rose Hill, so we loaded the kids up in the car (it took two trips) and drove over there. Sort of weird having to drive to a pool in the same subdivision, but OK. Took a couple of pictures at the pool of RePete in all her gear.

That’s some serious flotation going on there. She mucch prefers the pool to te beach. I guess at four years old the ocean is just too big and strong for her. I did manage to get her out into it a little bit yesterday, but she loves the pool. Now if I can just get her brave enough to go without the stuff…Her sister is like a fish so it probably won’t be long before she is as well.

After swimming we (the wife and I) loaded RePete into the car and drove to Hilton Head. Pete decided to stay and play at the house with all the other kids, and I think she regretted it later. She ended up being pretty bored.

We drove down to Harbor Town and let her look at the boats and the lighthouse. But first we started the drive the way we always start. It doesn’t normally take very long even when she is fighting it. The other two were the same way. I’ve been known to load my oldest girl up in the car just to get her to go to sleep.

She loved the boats. Several times she asked, no, demanded that we take her on a boat ride. I told her that next time we were in Bluffton maybe we would look up Rick and Georgia and see if they would take her on a boat ride. As I said, she loved the boats.

We wandered around on the pier for a few minutes. Here is the lighthouse from the water side…

And the restaurant at the bottom as well. I am somewhat interested in driving back up to Hunting Island again. The last time that we were there it was closed to the public, but I heard it is open again. Maybe when we come here in September for the boy’s graduation…

So we hung out and had a snack and listened to a bit of live music…

After we ate we let RePete run around the playground for a little while.

All in all it has been a pretty nice day. We arrived back at the house to have ribs, which were pretty good and the kids are all chilling as is the wife and her friend. I think they may even be chilling with a bit of Goslings thanks to a friend.

BTW Elisson, I fixed the post. It’s still not showing up properly on my laptop, but the embed code was stuck in there using WYSIWYG mode instead of straight html. Fixed I think. Thanks for the grossness.

We have one more day. I think that we are going to head back on Tuesday at some point. Tomorrow morning we are going to drive into Savannah, and I would kind of like to go back to Hilton Head at least once more. The next time I come I will most likely have to pay for lodging. It’s nice to have people that live near the beach, although I am sure the wife would much prefer them living back near us again.

Don’t know if anyone else will be posting here tomorrow. I am almost scared to see what comes next, althought they have certainly kept me entertained, as has Ms. Fab