Last summer my wife and I were planning on taking a babymoon. My wife wanted to keep it simple and go to Cape Cod. I said absolutely not! We have to go somewhere more exotic. She agreed, and then the planning began. We agreed on the Caribbean.
We were planning the trip for early August, but in June I was offered a new position, I told them I would begin in a month. My plan was to give two weeks’ notice and to take two mini trips the following two weeks (as opposed to one big trip, because I had grad school class on Monday and Tuesday evenings which turns out, I totally could have skipped.) When I gave my notice, my boss just told me that there was no need to give notice, and I should just leave already. I left the next day; felt like summer vacation when I was a kid having several weeks off
.
Right after I had the conversation with my boss, I checked AA.com and Avios to see what the best awards flights were to the Caribbean in the upcoming weeks. AA.com only gave me 2 destinations that had direct flights, Antigua and Bermuda, everywhere else would require a stopover or two. I checked avios, this was the time period when their award search was not working properly, so coincidentally, the only 2 destinations I was able to find seats using miles was to Antigua and Bermuda. I told my wife she can choose: first class wasn’t available, so she wanted to take a shorter flight since we wouldn’t be flying F, so Bermuda it is.
Had I booked through aa, it would have cost me 70000 AA miles in economy roundtrip for both of us. By booking with avios, the total cost was 30000 avios points for the exact same flights on AA.
Hotel-The only points hotels they HAD in Bermuda at the time was Fairmont, they had three properties there. Since we were there, they sold those properties. So we figured we would just spend cash on the hotels since we didn’t have any Fairmont points. We found a great rate for the Grotto Bay Beach Resort on orbitz, and called the hotel and they gave us the orbitz rate, saved us a few hundred dollars.
We arrived at JFK for our Wed evening flight. It began to rain, but flights were still taking off and landing, but for some reason, out pilots for our flight landed at a hotel in Connecticut, so we had to wait for them to make it to JFK before taking off. We ended up taking off 3 hours late. AA gave all of the passengers food vouchers to use anywhere in the terminal, we used it for Starbucks and Baskin Robbins because there weren’t so many kosher options. We didn’t hang out in the lounge for long because we were chilling by Starbucks.
We finally took off around 10:50 PM. The total time getting there was an hour and fifty minutes, not bad. Customs took such a long time even though we were the only flight that arrived so late.
We finally got our bags and went outside; there wasn’t a cab in sight. One cannot rent a car in Bermuda, only mopeds, which my wife was totally against due to the pregnancy. After 10 minutes, a cab came. We split it with another couple from North Carolina (we had no choice). Our hotel was literally a 2 minute drive from the airport. Being in the hotel, you wouldn’t know you were near an airport which was really cool.
We checked in, and we were driven to our oceanfront room. The room was beautiful. It’s the cheapest hotel in Bermuda, but probably the only hotel that has updated rooms. We did not know what our view looked like since we arrived so late.
We woke up the next morning to a spectacular view. We davened, ate breakfast, and then went to the activities desk to figure out what to do since we didn’t go with an itinerary. We decided to check out horse shoe bay beach, rated one of the best beaches in the world. We took the bus there and the views on the bus were breathtaking, definitely worth the shlep. We made it to the beach. As nice as it is, every single person from the cruise ships was there, thousands upon thousands of people. If anyone decides to checkout horseshoe bay, they should go early in the morning. We went back to the hotel, checked out the pool, then had dinner (seasons, not POM).
The next morning, erev shabbos, we decided to go to Elbow Beach because this was supposed to be the famous pink sand beach. We went there, and IMO, it’s better than horse shoe bay beach. The beach is totally empty, and the water is much nicer. You can spot the pink sand if you look hard enough or when the waves crash, otherwise it just looks like ordinary sand. We snuck into Elbow Beach Resort and used their fancy private showers by the pool to clean off the sand. On the way back to the hotel, we realized we forgot to bring Challah and grape juice. We went to the big supermarket near the central bus station and couldn’t find any bread resembling challah with a hechsher on it and no kedem grape juice or any kosher wines. So we bought welches grape juice and pita bread with an ou on it, good improvising.
Shabbos was relaxing, just stayed in the room most of the time and also walked outside a little. Motzai shabbos we just chilled in the room.
Sunday we wanted to go to the glass beach. That beach is on the side of the Island that doesn’t really operate on Sunday because everybody goes to church that day. We took the bus as far as we could, and then walked to the glass beach. The beach is not at all what you’d expect it to be, just a few shards of glass. Then we started the hike back to the bus in the humid 96 degree sunny Sunday morning. Some lady driving saw us walking and insisted on giving us a ride, this is just one example of how nice people are in Bermuda. She took us to the local bus station. We took the bus to the ferry and the ferry to the cruise port because everyone was telling us to go there. It started pouring while we were on the ferry. We got to the cruise port, and it was really uneventful. Just a bunch of old buildings with a mall inside. After a short while, we took the ferry back to town and a bus back to the hotel.
The next day was our last full day in Bermuda. In the morning we chilled by our private beach, and then we spent some time in the pool and went for a quick swim in the grottos. We had massages scheduled in the late afternoon in the grottos aka a cave with water, it was a really cool experience. There is a massage table on a gazebo floating in the water in a cave, naturally serine. The massage was good, though the guy giving me the massage acted like he was in a hurry to get somewhere.
The next morning we took a 2 minute taxi ride back to the airport to go back to the pouring rain/humid NYC
. The flight back was an hour and forty minutes. I would definitely go back here for a long weekend considering the flights are so short.
Hopefully I will post the pictures in the near future.
Example of how nice people are in Bermuda: our bus broke down, so a local lady who lived in a nearby house came to check to see if the bus driver needs any help, then someone who was driving by checked to see if that local lady who just went on the bus was okay.
The men who work in Bermuda where shorts and knee high socks with a suit jacket every single day!
