Before we begin, note that this is written from the perspective of someone who arrived by plane and stayed a full 8 days. If you’re arriving by cruise-ship, you’ll need to first take my advice of renting transport and then take about 5% of the things I recommend and do your best to make it a fun-time.
In addition, I stayed in Sandy’s Parish for this trip so if you plan on spending 100% of your time in St. George or Hamilton, there are other travel sites for you.
Finding your way around and things to do is incredibly difficult. I prefer reading blogs from locals or using Tripit / Foursquare. I don’t like Trip Advisor one-bit because you’ll only get the opinion of tourists. A falling down pile of rubble called the Unfinished Church ranked highly on things to do in the entire country of Bermuda. Well, you walk up and there’s a pile of rubble w/ condemned “do not enter” signs everywhere.
Great job, tourists.
Either by design or because the Bermudian tourism industry is so immature, there isn’t a resource of what to do once you’re there.
Oleander Cycles is where I rented our scoters. A week rental with insurance was $269. The Bermudian Dollar and US Dollar a 1:1 and bills are interchangeable meaning if you give someone a $20, it’s not clear if you’ll get Bermudian or US Dollars in return. Sometimes, it’s a mix! I spent $15 on fuel over 7 days and that’s with constant driving. Averaging 45 MPG on an island that’s only twice the size of San Francisco means you won’t spend a ton on gas. The speed limit is 35KPH in most parts of the island but ignore that. If you drive 35, every local will pass you with vigor. 60-70KPH is the average on middle and south road (that go through the island). On North road, 70+ is normal.
For proper cycling, wear your helmet, stay in the middle of the road, watch out for bumps an cracks in the asphalt since the scooters have very small tires you can get caught in the cracks. The asphalt in Bermuda is like oil-slick after rain-storms and first thing in the morning. Drive carefully if the roads are wet. The maximum transport you can rent as a non-resident is a 50cc scooter / moped. You can rent a 1-person or 2-person, just the length of the bike is different. Everything else is identical. Don’t feel bad because locals can only have 150cc scooters as the max engine size. Cars are the 1.2 and 1.4 liter variety. Fuel is $8 a gallon but not a huge issue with the island size and scooter range per tank being more than the length of the island twice. Indicate early, the brakes on these scooters are weak, do some googling on Carbed engines before you get on one so you’re aware of how they work so you can understand why throttle response is weak and why the idle a little rough.
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I rented a house for the week. This is the way to do it. It gets yu to explore the area more, gives you a home-base on evenings when you’re a cooked lobster from being in the sun all day and you won’t pay for parking your scooter. Most importantly, it allows you to cook meals at home. 60% of the food I consumed was bought from the local super market.
Speaking of markets, if you’re staying outside of Hamilton, there’s only one grocery you should be going to. That’s the Heron Bay Marketplace. Here’s the GPS Coordinates because that’s honestly the best way to get people there: 32.261713, -64.820710.
This is a proper American – sized Grocery store with 12 walls of fruits and vegetables, an actual deli, a wide range selection. It was pretty amazing. Because finding fresh fish means knowing a fisherman and buying direct off the dock, this is the only way I can really recommend buying fish unless you go to a restaurant.
Right next door is an ice-cream shop called Scoops. They make the ice cream and sherbet on-site. Also, their ice-cream cookie sandwiches are very popular. You can buy singles and on my 3 visits to scoops, I saw locals grabbing packs of 6 to take home. While the mixed-fruit smoothie at that tourist-trap mall in Dock yard is nice, it’s like $9. Whereas scoops has ice cream for about $5. Oh and I forgot to mention that they make waffle cones to order. Batter on griddle, wrapped warm and stuffed with fresh day old ice cream. Heavenly.
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I should remind you that this post won’t be ultra-formatted :) Just a stream of consciousness.
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While in Bermuda, you can eat fried fish sandwiches literally every day. I did, sometimes twice a day and here are my favorite spots.
- Woody’s BBQ about a mile south of Dockyard. It’s full of locals, I went there every day for a drink and ate there once. You may see a tourist or two but they’re easy to spot, “what’s in a bermuda swizzle?” LOLOL. Their conch fritters, jerked chicken and fried scallops generally sell out at lunch time. The fish sandwich is pretty decent. I believe they use Grouper. 32.308106, -64.854597
- There’s Art Mel’s which has easily the best food on the island if you want something fried up and delicious. A presumably teen family member of the owner will take you order then go back to watching anime on her iPad. Get a can of ginger beer with your order and wait. Their fried fish sandwich I believe is swai. Don’t bother ordering anything else. I tried 3 different things and their fish sandwich is aces like just the best thing I’ve ever eaten on an island and I was raised on an island. 32.304307, -64.778433
- Devil’s Isle Cafe in Hamilton. Great pour-over coffee if you’re into that, the $8 bread basket came with 4 kinds of warm grill toasted bread with hummus, fresh churned butter, oil, vinegar and shaved asiago. Their sandwiches are $16-$20 but once you’ve been on the island for a week and spend $14 for sandwiches, this minor price bump for incredibly fresh, well constructed flavor profiles is worth it. 32.293443, -64.784151
Let’s talk about Bermudian food for a moment. Everything is going to be fried. Deal with it. If you’re shopping, it’ll be easy to spend a lot of money on all-natural but from what I can tell, due to everything arriving by ship, it’s hard to find any food not loaded up with sugar or high fructose corn syrup. You can either go broke eating organic or fall in line and grab some Hamburger helper. Vegetables are incredibly expensive so lower your expectations when shopping for salad making ingredients.
Bermudians love raisins. You can get anything with raisins if you ask for it and no one will think twice. Pasta with raisins? Sure! The standard loaf of bread is raisin wheat bread. If you order a fish sandwich, it will be raisin bread. Specifically ask for white or wheat w/o raisins if you hate them but in my opinion, embrace it! The bread is delicious. Ginger beer is everywhere. Embrace that as well.
How about the Bermuda Swizzle? Well, Swizzle > Dark & Stormy all day, every day. Dark & stormy is something your grandpa drinks. The Swizzle is what you drink before falling asleep for 8 hours under a palm tree and waking up in the Knacker’s end of a cricket pitch. By the way, if you’re in town from July – August, please do yourself a favor and spend Sunday at a cricket game. I missed out and you shouldn’t. I went to a few matches in India and love it.
Back to the Swizzle, it’s this drink with Gosling’s rum (made in Bermuda by 3 guys who just love making Rum. They’re a family company. No tasting room or tours are offered because they’re too busy making rum.) Falernum is the core ingredient and you can order it online. Then you need rum, pineapple juice, orange juice and bitters. The most you should pay for a swizzle is $6.50. You can find it for $5 where the locals hang out. If a bar wants to charge you $12, leave. You’re in a tourist bar and you should feel ashamed.
There’s a lot more I could write but this should cover some of the basics for people who are first-timers to Bermuda. Feel free to drop me an email if you have some specific questions.