Flight is 1:30 going, a bit more coming back to New York; Continental Airlines serves food, American doesn't. American Airlines has become a nightmare to fly and its evening Bermuda flights are consistently late. Right side has view on landing and left side on departing. Arrival area is like country club more than airport with steel drummer and pull-up canopies for cars. Mini-van service to hotel is not bad option; with 2 lane roads and a speed limit of 30 miles per hour, taxis are not necessarily faster. Someone went 40 miles per hour and wound up on front page of weekend newspaper. Customs checks your bags here; they are looking for drugs. Allow about 25 minutes drive to most hotels in the center of the island. The first visit I stayed at the Elbow Beach Hotel on Elbow Beach, one of only resorts with its own beach. Get a room away from elevators and with curtains; the main house is convenient or you can take a cottage on the vast property. Also avoid rooms in areas without carpeting; the doors make noise when they are closed and certain areas of the hotel are like echo chambers. Room 451 is a quiet standard single but without a view. I was upgraded to a deluxe with ocean view but it was noisy so I moved back. Several hotels I've been in lately have been putting in new locks without silencers and I find my apartment in Manhattan quieter than these hotels. Everything is expensive; continental breakfast buffet is about $13 and cold lunch buffet is $23 with 15% service charge. You might find canned oranges in the fruit salad even though you can buy fresh oranges in the store. Locals pay dearly; petrol is $5 a gallon; paper towels are 50% higher here than in NY; rent for a studio apartment is $1,200 a month but salaries are generous to enable people to pay and unions are very strong with preference given to Bermudians over merit. Elbow Beach is as advertised; pink sand, pretty rock formations and cliffs, and turquoise waters. Sit in a hammock and look at the poinciana trees, the water, beach, etc. Very pleasant. Hotel grill room is not bad or you might find better food at Italian eatery on the beach called Cafe Lido; a fish entree at both is about $30 with service charge. Can drink the water in the hotels which have their own purification systems but not necessarily everywhere on the island. Hotel had a lounge featuring only cuban cigars; wonder what kind of cigars they smoke in US lounges? Fourth of July fireworks both Saturday and Sunday nights; Saturday night the host was the US consulate within view of hotel; sunday night was the hotel owner, a saudi prince, who i guess wanted the us consulate to see what a big friend of the us he is with his spectacular show that wowed all. certainly he didn't spend $100,000 on this just for the 25 people on the pool deck to see it.

sunday i engaged a taxi driver for 5 hours at $30 an hour to take me sightseeing. we visited various hotels such as sonesta (lagoon but no real beach; a bit cramped and tour-bus feely), southhampton princess (shuttle bus to beach; up on a hill; grande dame hotel), hamilton princess (just off "downtown" hamilton for business traveler and people who want to be able to walk into town); -- also shuttle to beach. some bed and breakfasts that start at about $150 per night with the taxes: Rosedon Inn (295.1640) just across from the hamilton princess hotel and Aunt Nea's Inn (297.1630), a block off the main drag in St. George's which is a pleasant hamlet near the airport on the north side of the island. an interesting property was next door to the Elbow Beach Hotel (236.3535) and was called the Stonington Beach Hotel (236.5416), a very quaint property with 64 rooms overlooking Elbow beach, run by the Culinary Institute of Bermuda to train future hoteliers. I've stayed here twice now and I really like this place; in the dining room I've met people who have stayed here 20 years in a row. Rooms are about $200 a night including full breakfast and afternoon tea. The dining room has a prixe fix dinner which is excellent and rooms are quite decent with private terraces on a lawn or one flight above facing the beach. I don't know of any better place in Bermuda to stay. It is also on the Bermuda College campus and guests have health club and library privileges if you want to check e-mail. Also the hotel's TV system is very good and BBC World is available all over the island.

Hotels are about $300 a night with taxes and service charges in summer and include room, breakfast and afternoon tea. Airfares can be high in summer at $450 as part of a package or $700 a la carte. Fares and prices are kept artificially high to keep out the lower classes and to milk out the summer season since the rest of the year is quiet. Most of the hotels are located in the center of the island about 10 minutes away from Hamilton, the country's capital with a shopping street of about 4 blocks in length. many hotels and B&B's have internet sites.

Visited Crystal Caves, a cave with interesting stalactite formations. definitely worth a half hour of your time. Right now Crystal Caves is under renovation but the Fantasy Cave is also on the property and open and well worth a visit even if you've already seen the Crystal Cave. only 220 foreigners get to own homes in bermuda and the process is highly regulated by the government which wants to discourage land speculation; prices start at $4 million and go sky high. perot, kennedy, kroc of mcDonalds...you get the idea. one nice thing about bermuda is the lack of all chain stores you see in the us; KFC got here by mistake and the islanders cut off all else. on a land sale to foreigners, you pay 22% of purchase price to Bermuda. new government (black dominated) wants to tax the rich and raise land taxes; will be interesting to see what happens now that the 70% black majority finally threw out the established structures after all these years. there are 60,000 residents and 110,00 tourists per year. perot paid $2 million for a vacant lot next to his house to prevent anyone from building on it. electricity is 100 volts; cable TV has a few canadian stations and BBC world service news along many american stations. bermuda is one hour ahead of east coast so prime time TV starts at 9pm. most things in supermarkets are from US. flights to london are 4 a week and takes 6-7 hours. i bought nothing on the island; you preclear US customs in Bermuda. one encouraging note: young bermudians leave to us and canada to get educated but tend to want to come back. most places are looking more and more like the us and their young ones want to leave -- bermuda obviously has some good points. even the 1 lane roads -- islanders say that it takes time to get used to multi-lane roads like they have in new york.

2002 Points of Interest: It is hot here in the summer and it is not fun to walk around during the day, especially in town; the only reason to be here at this time of the year is that water temperatures are 85 degrees (close to 30 centigrade). I'd rather come back in the winter since the water temperature for this Florida native is still too cold. Sea can also be rough with a strong undertow. This time I stayed at the Stonington Beach Hotel which turned out to be an excellent choice. Cottages on the ocean with a beautiful beach just a few miles from the town of Hamilton, excellent location and very laid-back relaxing feel, pretty sitting areas with a library room and outgoing staff that try harder, dining room with nightly prix-fix menus of about $65 plus 15% tip added to the bill. You're also right next to a college campus with access to library, internet and gym. There is a scooter rental shop too and you should have seen me riding around in the hotel parking lot with this elderly British instructor with a big mustache, Bermuda shorts and whistle guiding me along. The hotel is the best location on the island in terms of being close to airport, town, on a nice beach and next to another good hotel with full services (Elbow Beach). Bring a pillow; I'm not crazy about theirs. Virtually all the 600 taxis on the island are minivans; taxi to airport is 25 minutes and $25. Taxi to town is $10 and 10 minutes.

On this trip I walked next door to sit in my favourite hammock, walked around town and ate an ice cream sundae, checked out the supermarkets (if there is ever to be a revolution on the island, it will start here), museums and historical sites, and looked at the very good values on sale in the department stores at this time of year. For me to just sit in my hotel room, watching a 24/7 feed of BBC World (which I can't do in the US as it is for some reason not available here on a 24/7 basis), turn off the phone and read a book is enough to be totally on vacation. Very good dinner at Aqua, a restaurant at the Ariel Sands Hotel, a hotel owned partially by Michael Douglas, the celebrity. The chocolate sushi desert was very innovative and tasty. The hotel offers beachfront privacy and nice little cottages. It is not that much more costly than the Stonnington but it is an extra 10 minutes drive up the road and is really isolated. Not particularly service oriented. I phoned two days ahead from New York for a dinner reservation and asked for a certain table; I didn't get it, the table sat there vacant waiting for someone else with a reservation who never showed up even though I asked for it again, and they had no record of my original request. Phone 441.236.1010. Personally, I'd return to the Stonington.

An interesting activity is to take a 2 hour glass bottom boat ride for about $35 to look at the local coral reefs. Boat departs several times daily from the Ferry Terminal in Hamilton; crew is very friendly. All in all, prices here are less unreasonable than my 1999 text made it out to be. I was pretty crabby at the time (my apartment had been on fire while I was in Hong Kong so I went to Bermuda to calm down, and I wasn't in the best of health then) and I've since seen higher prices elsewhere making it reasonable by comparison. Remember there is no tax here on goods or services, so it balances out the high cost of groceries.

March 2003 Notes: As said above, American is abusing its position as having the only evening flight to Bermuda out of New York. They let our flight sit at the gate for almost 3 hours after we were boarded and seated waiting for 13 passengers coming out of Miami to connect. By the time we arrived about 2am, most of the taxis had gone away from the airport, the band had gone home and the hotel just left our keys at the front desk. If you are on such a flight, be sure to get to the taxi line ASAP.  They are thinking of bringing JetBlue to Bermuda; but lower fares will bring tanktop tourists and this is something this upscale island should avoid. Weather at this time of year is about 75 degrees by day, 65 at night. It is delightful, even if there are some clouds and rain. You can walk around. The beach is nice to walk on; although jellyfish make going into the 65 degree water a double whammy worth avoiding, but I am not much of a beach person anyway and overall Bermuda is much more enjoyable at this climate than in the heat and humidity of summer. In town, we lunched at Cafe on the Terrace, one flight above the seafront above the A.S. Coopers Crystal Shop on the main street of Hamilton (Front Street). The food and the desserts were excellent at this small cafe. Prices for shopping were higher than what the same goods sell for at Bed, Bath and Beyond in Manhattan, so even if there is no sales tax here it is no bargain. Marks and Spencer has one of its only stores outside the UK here since all its stores in Europe have closed. Inside City Hall is the Bermuda art museum, and just off the main street in Hamilton is the Museum of the History of Bermuda with a very nice little park behind it. Bought a pair of Bermuda shorts, matching socks and other stuff at Smiths of Bermuda. They have nice sweaters, shirts, ties and blazer jacket button sets too. (Salesperson Angela Southern at 295.2288.)

 For photos, click here.