Somewhere beyond the sea…
…between the East Coast and Europe is the small, remote island of the Bermuda.
Mark and I just got back from our Royal Caribbean cruise to Bermuda. It was right out of Cape Liberty, NJ (right outside NYC) so it was really easy to get there from Philly (ie no flying required).
The interesting part of the story is how we booked the cruise in the first place. We “won the cruise” by attending one of those crazy interactive (Powerpoint) presentations trying to sell us a timeshare. In the end, the cruise wasn’t completely free (of course), but we still ended up getting a pretty good deal.
The ship was huge! It had 3 large pools, 6 hot tubs, a basketball court, rock climbing wall, miniature golf, and even an ice skating rink!
Despite the bad weather on the way to and from Bermuda, we had a really great time. While we were on the ship, we participated in all the activities like dance classes, jewelry making. scrap booking, Bingo (funny story, we actually won a game of Bingo, but didn’t realize it until it was too late – yea, we could have won $500 our first night…). They had parades and shows on the ship that were absolutely amazing – there was even an ice capades show! One of my favorite shows was the Cooking Demonstration where yours truly volunteered. I got to stand up on stage and make my own chocolate cherry cake and drink cherry brandy while doing so! And of course we ate a ton of delicious food and were treated like royalty – one of the waitresses cut my french toast for me one morning 
The weather in Bermuda was much better then the weather at sea. The days would start off overcast, but by 11am, the skies would be clear and it would be a beautiful, sunny day. We certainly made the most of our two days on the island. We rented a two person scooter to get around the island. This was definitely the highlight of our trip. It made having to travel from place to place on the island our own little excursion. We booked a cave tour excursion through Royal Caribbean where we explored one of Bermuda’s many caves. At the end of the tour there was a lagoon that we could swim in. After the excursion, we explored the city of St. George, which is more of the historic section of the island. Bermuda has a lot of old military forts, so we saw one of the more famous ones, Fort Hamilton, which is located in the bustling city of Hamilton. And of course we went to the beach. The sand was not as pink as I thought it would be, but the water was absolutely beautiful (a little cold, but beautiful). Bermuda was formed by three volcanos, which are now inactive. Because of this, the island is very rocky so there were rocks to climb and play on while we were at the beach.
My rambling doesn’t do the trip justice, so head on over to flickr to see some shots from the trip.