BERMUDA
Island Tour
On Thursday, I took a land-based full island tour. The tour is 5 hours long and took us by and to a wide variety of sites on the island.
The tour was conducted on a minibus that held about 20 passengers. The buses are small because the roads are very narrow (as you will see in some of the pictures and the buildings are very close to the road. We drove through several villages and saw houses as well as commercial structures. We crossed the Somerset Bridge which is the world's smallest draw bridge. It has an 32 inch wide, hand operated drawbridge that was designed to allow sailboat masts to pass through.
As we drove past the villages, the bus driver explained the roof systems in Bermuda. There are no fresh-water springs, rivers or lakes, so the roofs are designed in a "step" pattern and designed to collect and filter the rainwater falling on them. The white coating consists of limestone which, in addition to the UV light from the sun on the white color helps to purify the water.
We stopped in the city of Hamilton, which is the capital of Bermuda. You can really see the character of the city with the buildings lining the streets. We were able to browse and shop in the stores.
There is exactly one franchise restaurant in Bermuda. It is a KFC (in Bermudian that stand for "Keep From Cooking") in Hamilton. There apparently used to be a McDonald's when there was an active US Navy base on the island.
We went by a little cove (Shelly Bay) that is near where there used to be a horse racing track. The bus driver said that they would walk the horses over to the bay to cool their feet. :)
We stopped in the town of St. George (also known as St. George's). It was the third permanent British settlement in the Americas. British sailors shipwrecked here in 1609 while traveling to Jamestown, Virginia. They liked it and decided to stay. The town, several forts, and historic sites around it are a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. St. Peter's Church in the town is the oldest surviving Anglican church in continuous use outside the British Isles. In the downtown park, there is a vintage ducking stool and stocks which were used as punishment for various "offenses".
We drove past several "pink sand" beaches. The sand has a very light pinkish hue derived from the coral that makes up the sand.
We stopped at Gibbs Hill Lighthouse which is a cast iron lighthouse built in 1844. Its light is over 350 feet above sea level and can be seen for 100 miles by planes and for 26 miles at the horizon.
This was a great tour. The driver was very informative offering great tidbits about life on Bermuda.
