The Dockyard

Well, actually, it's the Royal Naval Dockyard, but whatever, we're here!! Sometimes when you're cruising, you go to bed in the middle of the ocean and wake up at a dock somewhere fabulous! From our room we have a view of the Clocktower Mall. Originally (completed in 1856), it was a warehouse built by the British Royal Navy. Like a lot of the repurposed navy buildings around here, the walls are three feet thick!

We've been to Bermuda before, but not spent time on this section of the island. From the Dockyard there is a free shuttle service that takes you around to several stops that are technically within walking distance, but it's H O T here right now! Our first look around was via this shuttle. 

We poked around in some shops, stopping at different stops until...I completely crapped out. Did I mention that it's hot? And you know, I'm 7 weeks out of surgery, so swelling is a thing. Anyway, we had to schlep me back to the boat for some deep breaths and many Vanilla Shakerados.  😊 

Our happy place!

We had lunch in town at the Frog & Onion Pub. It's located in a cooperage that was built in 1853. Cooperages (if you recall from your history classes) were places where barrels were made, repaired, stored etc. And we had English pub food!! Well, the bruschetta was a one off, but how can you pass that up on a menu.

beef pasty 😋

fish sandwich on raisin bread 

And because, when in Rome, or Bermuda, the Rum Swizzle.  You can Google different recipes, but basically it's a lot of different rums and fruit juices!

At this point we headed back to the ship for ice and naps, because we had one more adventure on deck!

Around sunset we boarded a glass bottom boat for a tour of the reefs. Bermuda is surrounded by a huge reef and here's the obligatory fun fact: Bermuda is closer to Canada than the Caribbean! It's the northern most tropical reef and as such, the coral colors aren's as bright, but it was still amazing to see. There were huge brain, fire, and tube corals. 

I am doing well after surgery, but probably not navigate-open-water-in-flippers good, so this was the second best thing. We had a fabulous captain who gave us a wealth of knowledge about the history of Bermuda and even though it is a tiny nation, it has played a big part in our history. My favorite new information is about how stolen gunpowder helped George Washington et al defeat the British in the Revolutionary War. It's slightly more complicated than that - if you're interested, here's a good source. 

Back to the boat, it was wonderful to be out on the water. I get the irony -- we're on a cruise! But this was just wind in the hair freedom!

One cool thing we saw was a shipwreck. The boat had wrecked on one side of the island, and was brought around to this side to provide an artificial reef.  Another fun fact: they have found that because of the iron in the ship, the coral has grown exponentially faster than in or on other places. Interesting idea as we think about restoring reefs that have been damaged by sunscreen etc. Plus I love a shipwreck! (even if it's on purpose - ha!)

And back to the ship for the night. All told, it was a 6,184 step day. I'm not sure if that's an oops, or a boom, or something in between. What I do know is that I have the BEST travel buddy, and Bermuda is still magical. 🩵