July 9 - Day Three: The Island

“We travel for romance, we travel for architecture, and we travel to be lost.” – Ray Bradbury

It's another sea day...relaxing, eating, listening to music, eating, relaxing and eating are the things that are keeping us busy. We'll be in Bermuda tomorrow morning, so today I thought I'd share a little info on the island. Bermuda offers visitors a large range of things to do from natural places to explore, like beaches and caves, golf courses, museums, art galleries, nightly entertainment, snorkeling, diving, fishing trips and sunset cruises just to name a few, but the one thing Bermuda offers that other places we've vacationed in lately is shopping. Bermuda prides itself in offering a great selection of beautiful items from around the world (jewelry, crystal, china, perfume, clothing). The best thing about shopping in Bermuda besides the wonderful selection...no sales tax. I'll definitely be spending some of my time shopping.

The mid-Atlantic archipelago of Bermuda is a land of pink beaches, pink houses and pink shorts. Bermuda is not, as many people think, an island in the Caribbean. In fact it's not an island at all, but a hook-shaped archipelago, 640 miles off the coast of North Carolina in the empty Atlantic Ocean. Sir George Somers and his ship's washed ashore during a storm in 1609 en route to Jamestown, Virginia. It was a miracle they washed up on the only speck of land between the Azores and the Americas. The castaways established a camp while they built two new ships so they could continue their voyage. Bermuda has remained British ever since, recently marking it's 400th anniversary of its inclusion into the British empire. 

Pink is the defining color of Bermuda. Many of the traditional bungalows, with their white stepped roofs, are painted pink: carnation pink, fandango pink, bubble gum pink. Mark Twain once said that the roofs in Bermuda look like icing on a cake and it's true because along with pink homes many are painted other edible colors like pistachio green, custard yellow and cranberry red. It's an unmistakable architectural aesthetic: you could take a Bermudian house, transplant it anywhere in the world and you would still know where it was from.

Fun Facts:

• Bermuda has a subtropical climate, the average temperature is 71.6°F 
• Bermuda has more golf courses per capita than anywhere else in the world
• Bermudians speak English, but the second most-spoken language is Portuguese
• Bermudians are over-the-top friendly
• Bermuda has a robust history of pirating
• Bermuda’s national drink is the Rum Swizzle
• Bermuda has no restaurant franchises  
• Locals Bermudians are called an onion
• Rainwater captured from the roofs is Bermuda’s only source of fresh water
• Bermuda has no corporate income tax
• Bermuda is only 21 square miles
• You are never more than a mile away from the ocean in Bermuda
• Bermuda's flag is the only one in the world to depict a sinking ship
• Bermuda is the shipwreck capital of the world
• St. George, is the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the Americas.
• Bermuda is not in the Caribbean

Bermuda is roughly the same latitude as Charleston, South Carolina, and is over 750 miles from the nearest Caribbean islands in the Bahamas. Bermuda stays warm due to the Gulf Stream and has the northernmost coral reefs in the Atlantic.