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Monday, December 17th, 2012: Kings Wharf, Bermuda
Bob: Fortunately the sun was shining brightly when the Pacific Princess curled around the northern edge of Bermuda in the early morning. Unfortunately, due to Bermuda having an election that day and using the mooring area in Hamilton as a polling place, we were forced to moor out at the West end of the island at King's Wharf. |
Monika: One of the attractions of this cruise was that in Bermuda we were supposed to dock in Hamilton because the Pacific Princess is a really small ship. Unfortunately, today was election day in Bermuda and they needed the terminal as an election station. So we were shunted off to Kings Wharf on the west side where the big ships dock. But sailing past the coastline of Bermuda on a nice sunny day was still a treat. We made out all the familiar landmarks, the cut into St. George, the seaway into Hamilton, and finally the west end dock. |
Bob: I had decided to try renting a scooter on this visit and see some of the things we had missed previously, so we rented a two-seater one from "Eve". for a total of $64 for the day (and a 1/2 gallon of gasoline ended up costing us another $4). But first I had to pass rather minimal driving test where I road the 50cc scooter up and down a cobblestone courtyard, hewing to the left had "lane" as advised. Given all my driving in England, Ireland, and Australia, I had no trouble hewing to the left as instructed, but the scooter had very small tires so it was squirrelly on the cobblestones for sure! Fortunately, the streets in Bermuda were much more smoothly paved than that courtyard! Having passed the test, I loaded Monika on the back of a slightly larger, sturdier, and vastly underpowered scooter and off we went. Not until we were on our way did I notice the speedometer and odometer did not function, but as it turned out that was not a problem! Usually I had trouble just keeping up with traffic, and speeding was really not an option with a 50 cc, 1-speed scooter and us weighing a total of maybe 340 pounds! One radar display said we were going 42 kph, but I had to honestly doubt the accuracy of that machine. |
Monika: Bob always talked about renting a motor scooter. The first time we were on Bermuda we did not do it because it was raining. Today the sun was shining, so we decided to go ahead. Coming off the ship, there were representatives of the rental agencies willing to give us a ride to their place. We went ahead rented a scooter powerful enough (barely) to carry two people since I enjoy much more riding pillion behind Bob than being on one by myself. After all the paperwork was completed we went into an old fort. There a young woman explained the controls to Bob and had him do a test drive up and down an old walkway. When he pulled away, she looked at me and said, "He has ridden motorcycles before, hasn't he?" I told her that I met him when he was riding one, and have often sat behind him on one. So she decided he did not need anymore tests and sent us on our way, reminding us to drive on the left, and at each intersection I reminded Bob: wide right turns, sharp left turns. |
Bob: But I digress. We buzzed off down the main highway out of the King's Wharf area, and I tried to go fast enough to not have people tailgate me. But that proved impossible, so I resorted to checking the line behind me with my rear-view mirror and then pulling off every once in a while to let everybody pass. The worked most of the time, but sometimes one of the other scooter or motorcycle drivers would unexpectedly go roaring past right beside me in my lane, and THAT was very disconcerting. Most scooters were observing lane discipline, but some were driving "Italian" style and veering over onto the center stripe to pass even with traffic in both directions, which was also disconcerting and, in my opinion, foolhardy. We turned off from the main road to Hamilton (Middle Road) onto the aptly-named South Road, which parallels the main East-West road but along the southern shoreline. South Road is dotted with small parks and attractions of one sort or the other, and I had hoped it would have fewer vehicles and maybe less impatient drivers than the main road. In any case we overshot our first goal, Gibb's Hill Lighthouse, but then backtracked and found the correct turnoff to ascend the small (246 feet?) hill to the summit where the lighthouse is located. Special parking spaces designated for scooters seem to be at every major tourist site in Bermuda, and Gibb's Hill Lighthouse was no exception. We payed the "climb to the top" fee of $2.50 each at the gift shop and started climbing the 182 steps to the top. Fortunately, there were nice explanatory and historical plaques on the walls at each landing, so that gave us a great excuse to pause for breath at the landings every 30 or 40 steps. We learned the lighthouse was the second one constructed of sheets of cast iron bolted or riveted together to make a column, and it certainly seemed solid. |
Monika: We decided to drive along the south road that parallels the ocean and take in the sights along that,and then turn around after a couple of hours to have plenty of time to get back to the ship. Our first destination was the old lighthouse. I had looked on the map before hand so I knew approximately where the turnoff should have been, but I also knew when we had overshot. So we stopped, I re-checked the map, and we went back and caught the correct turnoff this time. There were special parking spots for motor scooters and we parked and bought tickets to walk up the steps to the top. Luckily, we came just before a tour bus arrived, so we were the only ones and could take our time walking upstairs. Since they had put nice exhibitions on each landing, we could rest every 50 steps or so and made it to the top easily. |
Bob: Our reward for climbing the steps was seeing the big Fresnel lens at the top facing the panes of glass all around, plus having a walk just outside. The wind was, by the way, shrieking at the top of the lighthouse and I was very glad it was sturdy enough to not sway in the wind, and that the old cast-iron railing, although rusty, seemed to be quite rugged and firmly fixed in place. That let me feel free to lean out over the abyss and take in the beautiful panorama spread below us. From the top of the lighthouse you can see the peninsula leading up to King's Wharf to the North, the bay and city of Hamilton across the bay to the northeast, the long line of the island itself just below that, and finally the southern coastline and the waters of the Atlantic just beyond that. What a pretty sea-and-landscape! |
Monika: At the top we had a beautiful 360 degree view over the island. There was a small ledge to walk around on and it was quite windy. So we had to be careful. But the view sure was worth the climb. |
Bob: Descending, we stopped back at the gift shop where I purchased 4 postcards for $1 and Monika picked up a thimble and a set of earrings, before climbing back on the scooter and proceeding just a mile or two eastward on South Road to Horseshoe Bay. We had fond memories of swimming and walking along Horseshoe Bay Beach in balmier weather. The crescent-shaped beach with interesting rock formations marking each side was just as pretty as it had been then, but this time the water was too cold for anyone to stay in it very long. |
Monika: We stopped at the gift shop and I found a really neat pair of earrings with sea horses dangling down. Just as we left, a tour bus came and we were glad to get out before it got crowded. Our next stop was Horseshoe Bay, a beautiful beach. We had been here before when it was summer and very crowded. This time of year, there were still people along the beach but only the bravest ventured into the water. With fewer people, we wandered around and could really appreciate the rock formation that marked one end of Horseshoe Bay. |
Bob: Continuing east-northeast on South Road, we stopped again at the Botanical Gardens. The museum was being used as a polling place, but it was too nice a day to spend it in a museum anyway, so we wandered around the grounds gawking at the trees and bushes and flowers, some of which were in bloom. I was lucky enough to snap a picture of one blossom just as a Monarch butterfly alighted on it, which pleased me enormously. Some school kids (?) were apparently having a picnic lunch on the grounds of the Botanical Gardens, and we were starting to get hungry too. |
Monika: We continued on the South Road, stopped at a few overlooks, but finally spied a sign saying "Botanical Gardens". We pulled in, parked, and walked over to the museum. It was being used as a polling place, and one of the candidates was outside greeting the people coming in. One of his entourage had just come back from Northern Virginia to help campaigning for his nephew. So we chatted a bit, but then went on walking through the gardens. There were birds singing and peacocks and -hens strutting in their enclosure. I had never realized, that the peahen also has some beautiful colors. There were, of course, also lots of flowers and trees. What a wonderful peaceful setting. |
Bob: Searching for a place to eat, we found a grocery that was open and decided to purchase raisin rolls, salami slices, and Laughing Cow light cheese to take back to a park we had just passed and make our own picnic lunch. So we backtracked to Devonshire Bay Park, parked the scooter, carried our raw materials over to the oceanside, and had ourselves a jolly fine picnic lunch whilst listening to the waves crashing on the shore. What fun! |
Monika: We were getting hungry, but did not find a lunch place that inspired us. So when we saw a supermarket we decided to stop and buy the makings of a lunch and find a good picnic spot. Devonshire Bay Park seemed ideal, so we took our sandwich makings over there and had a great lunch, listening to the ocean crashing against the rocks below us. |
Bob: Since we did not know how bad traffic might be on our drive back to King's Wharf, we decided to be prudent and start back shortly after 1:30, giving us not quite two hours before the ship departed. It turned out that traffic continued to be light as Election Day was also at least a partial holiday, and we arrived back at King's Wharf with sufficient spare time to check out the local tourist shopping area. I zeroed in on the fancy clothing store at the back corner where I had purchased a couple of my nicer thematic ties. Unfortunately, although the store still had a tie rack, they did not carry nearly the variety they had a few years back, and had no ties that were out of the run of solids, stripes, paisleys, and insipid patterns except for one tie with a lot of Italian text on it, which may have been from Dante but we weren't sure. Oh well. We turned in the scooter on time and I chatted with Eve, who owned the place. She said they ordered about 12 new scooters per year and had found the ones from China to be about 1/2 as expensive as those from traditional manufacturing countries like Italy. The Chinese bikes were, however, less durable and particularly like to fail after being crashed, which occurs quite often in the scooter-rental business on Bermuda, apparently! Eve had heard of someone trying out electric scooters, but she had not yet bought any for her fleet. Re boarding the ship about 3:15, we rested until time for dinner with the folks, but after that we were just too worn out to do anything else. Apparently driving the scooter, while exhilarating, also used a lot more cognitive effort than normal driving, and as a result I was mentally exhausted. I couldn't even keep my eyes open to read, so we turned out the lights and turned in for the night. |
Monika: But that was all we felt we had time for. So we slowly wound our way back, stopping at one point to watch some kites flying over the ocean. We filled up the car at the last gas station before Kings Wharf, stopped at the one and only shopping mall. Here Bob had earlier bought some nice ties, but that store was no longer handling the novelty ties, only typical boring ones. So on we went back to the rental agency. We were in plenty of time before all aboard and watched us steaming out to sea. Again, we had to turn around and off-load another sick passenger. But then we were finally on our way to Ft. Lauderdale. |
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