July 8th: Hello, Bermuda!

Mark and I had a random long weekend in July, and I certainly wanted a break after wrapping up all of the Women Can Fly stuff, so we decided to put our time off to good use. We both worked the mid that Saturday into Sunday, hopped in the car at the end of the shift...

...and drove right to DCA. It was time for a long weekend in Bermuda!

I always like getting to fly out of DCA; these are 'my' airplanes that I talk to all the time, so it's nice to see them and remember that they are real airplanes and not just blue blobs on my scope.

They were using Runway 1, so we got a pretty sweet view of the National Mall on takeoff.

It didn't take long to climb up and head out toward the ocean. We waved goodbye to Delaware...

...and said hello to some storm clouds out over the Atlantic. We stayed clear of everything, though, and it was a pretty good ride.

A couple short hours later, we could see Bermuda!

The approach was really pretty. We wound up landing 30 minutes early, thanks to some favorable winds (and possibly also thanks to one of my work buddies, who I found out later told the center to 'hook us up' hahaha). It didn't take long to clear Customs and grab our bags, and before we knew it we were in a taxi heading to our Airbnb.

We really lucked out; our Airbnb was really nice. The hosts weren't there when we arrived, but our room was ready and waiting for us, along with a couple of bus passes they had picked up for us in advance. We took a few minutes to say hi to one of their doggies...

...and check out the backyard (which we were welcome to use) before heading to the room for a nap.

I was struggling a bit, so I took a longer nap while Mark walked down to a nearby grocery store for a couple things. By the time I dragged myself out of bed, he was back with some snacks and a few other things. We hung out, ate the snacks, and eventually decided to take the bus toward the beach.

It was fairly easy to catch the bus, though maybe not as easy to figure out where to stop. We wound up going a little too far and had to backtrack a bit (which wasn't the most fun thing, since the roads are pretty narrow and don't have sidewalks), but we eventually found...

...the railway path, which was nice and open.

We followed the railway path for a little while and eventually wound up down on South Road, on the southern end of the island. Southlands Park was nearby, so we wandered over to check it out.

There were all sorts of neat trees there; it felt like walking through a rainforest. I especially liked this one. We eventually popped out on South Road again, walked a little further down, and found ourselves on...

...Marley Beach. Not bad!

We spent a few minutes checking out the beach, then decided to go find some dinner.

We wound up just across the street from the beach at The Swizzle Inn. You could just see the beach from our table outside.

We ordered a pitcher of rum swizzles to share, and everything was really good. The fish sandwich was fantastic; I basically stuffed myself.

We had planned to take the bus back to the Airbnb, but we waited for a while and never saw one. We wound up grabbing a taxi instead, and a few minutes later we were back at the room.

Mark had grabbed a bottle of Portuguese wine when he was out earlier, so we hung out by the pool for a little bit, sipping some wine, before heading to bed. Not a bad start to the long weekend!   :)