Tag Archives: Photos

Modes Of Transport: Bermuda

Here is a brief look at a few of the forms of transportation on the island of Bermuda.

Small cars are big in Bermuda. Buses only hold a dozen or so people. Even the garbage trucks are small. Much more practical cars than we have here in the states. Electric vehicles are also very popular – the island is so small that you don’t need to worry about range, and with the tiny cars they are easy to park. Just don’t bring a lot of luggage!

The guy in the wheelbarrow? No idea! He might have been injured, but more likely had overindulged on Dark & Stormys. 😉

A Bridge Not Too Far

Somerset Bridge, known as the “worlds shortest drawbridge.”

One of the famous “attractions” in Bermuda is the Somerset Bridge, reputedly the smallest working drawbridge in the world. The bridge connects Somerset Island with the mainland in the western parish of Sandys, crossing a small channel connecting the Great Sound with Ely’s Harbour.

From Wikipedia (almost as reliable as a Snapple bottle cap) 😉 :

“The bridge is mentioned in the acts of Bermuda’s first parliament, held in St. George’s on 1 August 1620. Bridges were to be constructed at Somerset, the Flatts, and Coney Island. Additionally, the road from Somerset to Warwick was to be improved, and extended to Castle Point. The bridge appears on a 1624 map of Bermuda.

The bridge is opened by hand, creating a 32-inch gap that allows the passage of a sailboat’s mast. The drawbridge is depicted on a Bermudian banknote.”

Somerset Bridge, known as the “worlds shortest drawbridge.”
Somerset Bridge, known as the “worlds shortest drawbridge.”

The bridge is used very rarely these days, as most sailboats do not traverse that channel, either due to size or draft.

These guys are used to being fed. They didn’t stick around when it was apparent we had no treats!

Hamilton, Bermuda

Our cruise ship docked in Bermuda at the Royal Naval Dockyard, which is located on the northwest side of the island. We were there for essentially three days – from 8am on Wednesday until 4pm on Friday. The ship acted as our hotel – we could come and go as we pleased. No having to be back on board at a given time at night. As long as we made it back to the ship on Friday afternoon we were good! In fact, if we had friends there or otherwise wanted to stay at a hotel or a resort on the island we could have done that. Of course Kathy & I returned to the ship each night. Why, when we already had a place to sleep? 😉

We booked a tour on the first day that took us around the west side of the island and included the capital of Hamilton. Hamilton is a busy little town, with a Front Street full of shops and restaurants, and the side and back streets occupied by the offices of multinational insurance and banking companies that take advantage of favorable legal and tax regulations. We spent a short time walking around the town, mostly ducking into shops to take advantage of the air conditioning – it was hot!

Our tour took us back to the ship in the early afternoon. We had a dinner reservation back in town that evening, so returned via ferry from the Dockyard to downtown Hamilton.

These photos are specifically from Hamilton, and I’ll do a series of posts from some of the other locations we visited. We did another tour on our second day, and spent the third day exploring the Dockyard. I’ve got photos from those days, too! Should provide plenty of material for a while. 🙂

https://www.worldatlas.com/maps/bermuda
https://www.worldatlas.com/maps/bermuda

 

Bits From Bermuda

Celebrity Summit docked at Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda

I’ve finished processing the photos from our visit to Bermuda, and have posted them to my Adobe Portfolio site under ‘2022-07 Celebrity Summit to Bermuda.’ As usual, this is a lot of photos but a fraction of those I took! I’ll post a few at a time and talk about them here over the coming days.

Verandah of The Commissioners House. National Museum of Bermuda, at the Royal Naval Dockyard. (Yes, they eventually left! )

Words Worth Sharing

Telephone booths in Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda

In earlier posts I have referenced comments by a local beverage store manager in his weekly “Boozeletters,” where it talks about special events and new arrivals at the store, along with interesting recipes. He ends each newsletter with an “After Rant.” where he opines on random things he has thought about during the week. Sometimes they are simply rants, other times they are very philosophical. I thought this week’s was especially good, and excellent advice for us all. It’s quite long (sorry) but rather that end up quoting most of it, I am pasting it below. I hope you enjoy it.

THE EPILOGUE: “THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU”

So my whole life, for as long as I can remember, I have been made to feel like an alien or a weirdo. You can pick whatever name you want to put on it. At a certain point you stop arguing and just kind of roll with it. Say you are odd before they do! “Oh yeah I like to reheat my pizza in the oven, because you know me, I am an oddball.” I like to wear socks that match I like to wear mismatched socks. I like things to be neat, I like things to be messy. I skip the ends of songs, I eat dessert first, I walk around with the pebble in my shoe for hours before taking it out.

YOU”RE NOT WEIRD! Maybe no one ever told you this before, certainly no one has told me this, but it came to me like a lightning bolt right when I was in the middle of apologizing for the way I like to eat a meal. I eat the worst thing on the plate first and finish with the best. I realized that there was in fact nothing wrong with this or me at all. It greatly increases my enjoyment of the meal and effects zero other people except for one ex that took notes “doesn’t like my green beans”. It is just a totally harmless ritual that gives me the most pleasure and I have no reason to apologize or explain it to anyone. You have your own set of idiosyncrasies, and they came not from some broken part of your brain but from trial and error. This concept of normal, this concept of the right way, these are outdated nonsense ideas that are only impeding your joy. When I was a young man I was making a sandwich and adding more and more things because it was disgusting my father. And even though I didn’t really like the creation I ate it all because it was more important to bother him. But what I took from that and it has been a great life lesson is that even at five I knew that I was going to find the thing, whatever it was. I knew that there must be some untried combination that was yummy and boring adults had not tried it because they were so boring. I have spent decades explaining and defending myself because I assumed that they there right. I was only enjoying these ghastly creations because I am a weirdo, an outcast, a nerd, a geek, or a freak. When in fact, the addition of crispy potato chips inside my sandwich elevates the meal because of the additional crunch, that is now in EVERY bite.

There is a huge part of the population that is walking around and very aggressively trying to maintain the “norms”. Raising their kids that way, interrupting peers, and even strangers to guide folks back to the straight and boring. They hold on to the “rules” like they were a life preserver. When they see you walking your own path they get jealous and defensive. They long ago gave up on living the kind of life they actually wanted and are now committed to ruining your good time because YOU are doing it wrong? Kick rocks! Playing it safe got you to a place to where you want to bother folks that are having a good time doing it their own way? This is your victory? This is your mountain top? When I see the person skipping down the path singing songs in their head, that is the person that inspires me. Not the person who has a cinder block land on their toe and says “unfortunate” as they limp off into the night.

The spiritual guide for The Boozeletter, is one Hunter S Thompson and he championed the doomed. He said let your freak flag fly! But as much as I love him, he was wrong in a way. We are not in fact freaks. That is the name given to us for knowing what we actually like. Figuring out what you actually like is one of life’s most important challenges and you can only arrive there by actually trying things out. You can only get there by trying lots of things and figuring out where you want to be. They said you should be aloof and cynical but you heart tells you to get involved and to celebrate joyously. They said Billy Joel is out, but you love Keeping the Faith. “you know the good ole days weren’t always good and tomorrow isn’t as bad as it seems”. You love reality tv and pizza rolls and have no desire to see the Opera. My friend Adam puts peanut butter on his burger, it’s a family tradition! His addition of peanut butter has diminished zero of my burgers. It has no impact on them at all. I tried it once, didn’t really love it and moved right along. Didn’t need to label him and his whole family freaks to make me feel better about my condiment choices. I love peat, i love smoke, I love funky rums, it doesn’t make me weird and you are not weird for not liking them. What would be wrong, is if you just kept buying Laphroaig and Adrbeg and Hampden Rum and Mezcal after Mezcal just hating it all but drinking it because they said they were cool and advanced or whatever.

Why is there an unending line of people telling us we are doing it wrong? Like there is some kind of fool proof guide book to live a happy life. You finally got to Paris and found out the city was dirty. The Mona Lisa is actually a quite small painting, and now that you finally tried it, you like Makers better than Van Winkle. Oh we cannot say these things aloud! We must protect our thoughts that fall outside of the agreed upon or else we shall be shamed once again! Well I am done with all of that! I will drink what I want, eat what i want, watch what I want, and do them all how I like it best. I will quit a movie in the middle because it is not going to get better, I will dump my unsatisfying drink down the drain, I will stop eating when I am full, and the revolution can start with me. No one has to follow me, we can’t defeat the volume of the “normies” but we can find our spaces to shine and be free, and your brain needs to be one of those spaces. Although, putting crispy chips in your sandwich because that is magic is something worth trying. You can do it all the way you like it and stop apologizing for it instantly.

All of those people that have been calling you out for all of this your entire life were dead wrong. Jealous, insecure, closed off jerk faces that saw your joy and freedom and wanted to ruin it for no good reason. You were happily putting sesame chicken on top of plain spaghetti noodles and they said “you can’t do that!” What do you mean I can’t? I did and I like it. “Because it is wrong!” “It is wrong for me to enjoy something?” “Yes it is wrong and you are weird.” So you believe them because they are older and seem wiser and oh boy are there a lot of them. Family members, romantic partners, teachers, coworkers, RANDOM strangers! They are everywhere they are one hundred percent certain you are doing it wrong and that you are abby normal!

Perhaps our greatest gift is that we are these unique people struggling through all of life’s same situations. That the individual and the universal coincide harmoniously. That you like a mocha but she likes plain coffee but when it falls off of the roof of the car spilling before even one sip has been taken, well you have done that as well. You know that pain and frustation. Do you go back for more? Do you go home and quit? Do you suffer through your now certainly ruined day? So even though you like to get warm coffee and let it sit until it is room temperature, and she takes her ice coffee and puts it in the freezer to make it even colder, it still stinks when it spills! If you dress like a fashion runway model or you are just trying to pass through without being noticed, neither of you wants red wine to spill on your clothes. We see people doing a thing that we don’t do or maybe that we don’t enjoy doing it and part of us just wants to label them as crazy, odd, misguided or flat out wrong. But why? I mean someone out there likes soggy fries and that is just fine! People love Basil Hayden and I have never owned a bottle of it and I never will but dammit, enjoy it if you do! Do I think you should just keep buying it over and over and over until death? No I do not. I think there is a whole world out there to be explored and if what is preventing you from exploring it is fear then that is not being in your happy place.

I am talking about the results of exploration. You tried the crispy fries because that’s what everyone said was the best. But you just don’t like them. You tried all of those cask strength bourbons but you just don’t like them. You want soft and mellow. Great, enjoy it! The real test in life is to just be the best verison of you that you can be. That’s all. You may not get to change the world, but you can still drop your friend off at the airport. You might not learn another language but when someone from another country is trying to figure it out you can patiently help them. They said “Citizen Kane” is better than “The Big Lebowksi” but you dozed off to the one and have seen the other one hundred times. You don’t owe them anything. Their rules are arbitrary and based on who knows what! Every single hundred point wine is not meant to be had today. They are meant age, so you can grab a Page Mill Cabernet and wipe the floor with Silver Oak or any other Wine Spectator anointed wine. You are an adult and you have hopefully figured out who you are and what you enjoy. So go and do those things and do them proudly.

I have a friend in the business that does Midori shots. Midori is way too sweet for me, but it gives him great joy, so he is not wrong, and neither am I. Because there is no absolute. Scotch tasted rotten to me when I was 21 and now it tastes like magic. I wasn’t wrong then and I am not wrong now. So the next time you are about to bring out the speech about “well I know that people say I am weird because I like to put ranch dressing on my steak, but it just tastes good to me.” Skip it, pour the ranch on and enjoy YOUR steak. I tell customers all of the time “I am not taking confessions today” and the reason I say that is because the only part I care about is did you enjoy it? If you enjoyed it, you won! And you can say that you don’t like Blue Label, that you thought Silver Oak was too oaky, that Clase Azul is too sweet, that you don’t enjoy Marvel movies etc because the reverse is true as well. You don’t HAVE to like something because they told you it was great.

Boil it down to this folks. We are all wrong about so many things on a daily basis. They thought the sun revolved around the earth. What we are NOT wrong about, is preferring Chicago style pizza over New York. We are not wrong about unpacking our suitcase the moment we get into the hotel. We are not wrong about cake being better than pie. We are only wrong when we take the pie out of someone else’s hands and shout “let them eat cake!” You worry about you, and let them worry about them, and if someone prefers pie over cake that’s great! You do not belong on the island of misfit toys because you watch the entire credits at the end of the movie. I am sorry if no one has ever told you this.

Cheers

Keith

Sign outside a bar in Hamilton, Bermuda

Pasta Mañana

Kathy & I have always enjoyed the fact that much of the food on cruise ships is actually made on board. Most of the breads, sauces, ice cream & gelato are made on board. Some of the pasta is also made in-house, but generally only in the specialty restaurants. The sheer volume of pasta needed to serve hundreds or thousands of dishes does not lend itself to in-house preparation.

Celebrity cruise ships have a specialty restaurant called Tuscan Grille, which is essentially an Italian-themed steakhouse. It’s a long way from Tuscany, but is appropriately decorated, and a lot of the menu items are Tuscany influenced. We especially look forward to the artisan breads, yummy olive oil and aged balsamic vinegars. And the cheese! Sigh…. 🙂 There is nothing like the peppery taste of a good olive oil. And while you can’t get Pici Pasta there, what they do make in house is pretty darned good!

The same morning as our sushi making demonstration, there was a pasta making demonstration. They were timed so that we could easily leave one and go to the next, getting there in plenty of time for a front row seat. And there was no plexiglass to blur our view and cause reflections, so I was able to get some pretty decent photos.

Chef Michael walked us through a very basic pasta dough recipe, then handed the dough off to his assistant Glenn, to run it through the fancy, $30,000 German pasta machine, pressing out spaghetti and rigatoni. Just a little more robust than a home pasta maker! Once again, we were not able to sample the output, but as it turned out we were scheduled to have dinner there that evening, so we made a point of trying out several of the pasta offerings. They were quite good!

 

For anyone who didn’t get the musical reference in the title:

YouTube player

Wake Up, Little Sushi

One of the things we love about sea days on a cruise is there are often educational – or at least entertaining – activities scheduled throughout the day. Sometimes they take the form of a guest lecturer, a Q&A with the captain and officers, or cooking demonstrations. The first one we attended was a sushi making demonstration in the ship’s sushi restaurant, Sushi On 5. So called because it is on, you guessed it, Deck 5. It used to also cost $5, but inflation…that was a while ago. It is now an ala carte specialty restaurant, which we don’t mind paying extra for because we like sushi. 😉

Kathy & I are by no means experts, but we have come to enjoy sushi in its various forms. We enjoyed listening to Raymond, one of the waiters and the manager of the restaurant, explaining to a skeptical couple that sushi does not necessarily mean ‘raw fish,’ that the term actually refers to the style of rice used in sushi cuisine. And of course some dishes served at sushi restaurants do not even contain rice, such as sashimi.

Sushi chef John took us through the process of preparing the various ingredients for his dishes, including a shrimp roll, nigiri, sashimi and a custom dish, the name of I’ve forgotten but it looks like an ice cream cone with fish. I asked him about his knives, which he explained were hard Japanese steel, and that he spends an hour every morning sharpening them in order to cut the fish smoothly and cleanly. They sure looked sharp to me!

We didn’t get to taste the samples, but we had already eaten lunch there and we returned one evening for dinner, both of which we enjoyed very much. Raymond walked us through the menu and made some excellent suggestions for dishes that we enjoyed.

It was an interesting and educational experience, and one of the many reasons we love sea days!

Sailing…But Not to Philadelphia

Sorry, old song reference for you youngsters. 😉

One of the highlights of our departure from Cape Liberty was that our ship turned “up” the Hudson River for a sail-by of the Statue of Liberty. For me it was special, because previously the only view I had had of the famous landmark was the view from an airplane window as we landed in Newark. And that was nearly 10 years ago.

We discussed coming to Jersey City a day or two earlier, but as I said in my last post, we decided to keep this trip a little more simple. And, knowing that our ship was due to sail past the statue meant that we didn’t have to endure the lines and the crowds to sail to the island itself. Another time, for sure.

So as we sailed out of the port, around (well not quite around) the statue, we got a “sea level view” of the NYC and Jersey City skylines and waterfront, and a fish-eye view of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge as we passed below it. In no time at all we were at sea, steaming towards the <suspenseful music plays> Bermuda Triangle. More to come!

A Swing Through The Steel City

The Greenhouse at The Frick Museum in Pittsburgh

No, Pittsburgh is not on the way home from West Virginia! Kathy recently reconnected with a childhood friend, who lives part of the year in Pittsburgh. We cruised with them in March and visited them in Florida, so we decided that a detour north before heading south was worthwhile.

Tom and Howard at ‘Over The Bar’ restaurant at North Park in Pittsburgh

When I found out we were going to be in the area, I contacted fellow photographer and blogger Howard Grill and made arrangements to meet for breakfast at a park near where we were staying. We met there on Saturday morning, had a lovely visit and spent some time exploring the lakeside. By the time I got my camera out the light had gotten harsh, but there were still some interesting reflections.

North Park Lake in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
North Park Lake in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

After our breakfast, we headed to our friends’ home and took a jaunt into town to visit The Frick. The Frick Pittsburgh is an art museum which is the legacy of Helen Clay Frick, daughter of industrialist Henry Clay Frick and his wife Adelaide Howard Childs Frick. The family home was called Clayton, which is on the site of the museum, from 1883 to 1905.

‘Romare Bearden: Artist as Activist and Visionary’ Exhibition at The Frick Museum in Pittsburgh
‘Romare Bearden: Artist as Activist and Visionary’ Exhibition at The Frick Museum in Pittsburgh
SLAY: Artemisia Gentileschi & Kehinde Wiley Exhibition at The Frick Museum in Pittsburgh
The Car & Carriage Museum at The Frick Museum in Pittsburgh
1898 Panhard et Levassor. The Car & Carriage Museum at The Frick Museum in Pittsburgh
1940 American Bantam Convertible Coupe. The Car & Carriage Museum at The Frick Museum in Pittsburgh
The Greenhouse at The Frick Museum in Pittsburgh
The Greenhouse at The Frick Museum in Pittsburgh
The Greenhouse at The Frick Museum in Pittsburgh
Clayton, former home of the Frick family. The Frick Museum in Pittsburgh
The Greenhouse at The Frick Museum in Pittsburgh
Visitor Center at The Frick Museum in Pittsburgh

I’ve still got a few photos to process, but have completed the best ones. As I typically do, I have created an Adobe Portfolio gallery of selected photos from this trip at My Adobe Portfolio page.