home is the sailor home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hills.
well, ive been home from bermuda/sailing/charleston for about a week now, and i guess im finally gettin around to this. i forgot about it while i was on the boat because well, no internet and no time. actually, the ship had internet, but i couldnt figure out how to get the wireless on my computer... mostly because it's reserved for the officers. since i was at sea, im retroactively writing articles about the trip.
bermuda is one of the places in the world, where i feel i could make a permanent home... of course i say that now... hong kong was claustrophobic after four months living there... and hong kong is a bigger land mass than bermuda. so its possible i'd get just as claustrophobic there... the second thing i loved was the bermuda shorts. blazer, shorts, thigh high socks, and shoes is acceptable dress for the day... in proper british colonial tradition, which makes it awesome. i got four pairs of bermuda shorts and four pairs of socks. i got a pair of lime green bermuda shorts... which i think is pretty cool. but youll be walking around downtown hamilton and its tourist, tourist, tourist, and then you see a guy in shorts and a blazer with a nice briefcase and youre like, he works at one of the insurance companies in bermuda. the people in bermuda are really nice, they always say hello as you walk past, which i like, and i had lots of fun conversations with cab drivers about cricket and local bermuda politics and things.
foodwise, bermuda is pretty much whatever, same as anywhere else... i generally ate at my hotel for dinner because it was one of the best restaurants on the island, and the food was good. and when i travel by myself, sometimes im reluctant to explore to the utmost extent the various culinary options because i dont mind being alone during the day, but eatin alone still bothers me immensely. i had dinner one of the nights with a retired english couple, and another night i sat across from some ancient new englanders who had some fun stories, so that was better than sitting at a table by myself. so if you're in bermuda, you should try eating at ascots restaurant at the royal palms hotel... very nice. the bartender there was bulgarian, so i told her my great grandfather had come to the US from varna, bulgaria and she taught me a few phrases.
the specialty in bermuda is, bermuda fish chowder, which uses white fish like snapper as the main base... and its pretty much fish soup until you add in the local bermudan rum and sherry pepper... the restaurants give you a bottle of rum and a bottle of sherry pepper and let you add it to your own taste... the rum gives it flavour and the sherry pepper gives it a nice little kick. i brought back a bottle of each, so when i get back to tulsa i can make me some bermuda fish chowder. one of the favoured local fishes is wahoo. which im sure the uva boys love... it's a good fish. i had it several times when i was in wahoo. it's good stuff.
bermuda is a pretty island, if disney did a caribbean island, it would be bermuda. yes, iknow bermuda isnt in the caribbean, but it doesnt matter, its close enough... i didnt see many/if any poor/homeless people. which is cool. and the few homeless/drunk lookin types didnt beg for money, they kind of averted their gaze. it was nice. another nice thing about bermuda, is in hamilton, the capital city, there was a parking garage right on the harbourfront, but you couldnt tell it was a
parking garage... i think before the cruiseships came, it was a warehouse, and now it shares space as a parking garage and cruiseship terminal.
the weather in bermuda was fairly poor while i was there... it rained half the time i was there, but thats ok, i didnt mind, the water was too cold for this ole boy to go swimmin anyhow. the few good days we had, i spent exploring alot of the fortifications on the island... bermuda was a major british naval base, and the link that protected british communications between halifax, nova scotia and the british west indies... the whole island is crawling with fortifcations, like fort st cat
herine, gates fort, fort hamilton, and the fort at the dockyards. next to alot of these forts are old discarded cannons that after they became obsolete were simply dumped off the ramparts.
probably the greatest event in all of bermuda is a complete tourist event... when the cruise ships come in, wednesdays and saturdays at noon, the local bermudians entertain them in st george with some good old fashioned 17th century crime and punishment. we all had to read the scarlet letter in high school about yankee puritanism, and this is almost a page out of it, with the public humiliation of gossiping/naggin women. in the town square alongside the quay is a chair at the end of a long pole mounted on a chasis. they pull several stout fellows out of the audience to be the crew at one en
d of the pole, and then take one of the chaps off of that, charge him with being drunk and tie him to a pole. they then bring the gossipin/nagging woman from the town hall and charge her in front of the crowd with being a gossip and a nag. she then began to recount some amourous stories relating to the town crier's sister and certain sailors on the norwegian cruiseliner that was tied up alongside the ordnance wharf
.
they place her in the chair and then dunk her 7 times. it is awesome. oh so awesome.
complex. huge landscaped terraced gardens, covered with lakes... from the air it had a vague resemblance to versailles, however, on the ground not quite... partially because the big house got burned down by the yankees. there was the big house with two l
arge additional wings for guests and office space. after the war they rebuilt one of the wings and used that as a home... it still looks like an english country manor, but the gardens lost alot of their focus with the destruction of the bighouse... the gardens are nice, its hard to say any place that is full of spanish moss draped live oaks isn't nice... but the real jewel at middleton plantation is the restaurant. if you go to charleston, you have to get there for lunch. 
the restaurant is set just off the gardens overlooking one of the lakes surrounded by trees. it's almost like dining outside. the interior is light, airy, and almost all window. the food was excellent. three course lunch for 15 dollars. good local food. i had she-crab soup, quail with corn pudding and collard greens, and rice pudding for desert.
the second set of three pictures, is boone hall plantation. boone hall is famous because of its drive lined with live oaks. 
3/4 of a mile of live oaks perfectly spaced. i
ts the type of thing that takes centuries to develop... apart from the tree lined drive, boone hall is famous because the house was used as the big plantation in North and South. which is funny because the actual plantation house was built in the 1930s... basically what happened is some wealthy people bought the plantation and when the wife saw it, she was like, this isnt at all what a plantation house 
is supposed to look like. so she tore it down and built the present house... the question i have, and didnt ask is, are the slave quarters original or did she rebuild them in brick too. cause those cabins looked pretty ritzy... and probably alot better than what my southern ancestors were livin in... they have an exhibit called slave street there, and they have a lady who does a talk about life in the slave quarters... she wasnt there when i went to boone hall, but, the next day i was at fort moultrie waitin to watch the tall ships sail out of charleston, and i met the lady and her husband. their son has a Jboat and they were yankee sailors from port jefferson, new york. so that was amusing.
charleston itself, is as it always is, charming. the houses in the old town tend to be large and ornate. because of the heat/humidity most of the old houses have 
big porches... the big porches let people sleep outside during the summer months to help stay cool... most of them have screens and doors on the ends so that you have a modicum of privacy. all the houses porches all face the same direction so you have the garden and then the back of the other persons house to screen in the porch for privacy.
charleston is a southern city. it was the birthplace of secession and the first shots of the war were fired at sumter. the city still bears some of the scars from the siege which lasted three years. 
one of my favourite monuments is the Monument to the Defenders of Charleston at the Battery. the monument had to have been built in the 1920s or 1930s, because it just seems so pseudo-fascist... it's greek allegorical and just seems sort of fascist to me... just the style of sculpture reminds me of some of the italian fascist/futurist sculptures in the 1920s...
a fun thing to do in charleston is to drink. because there are lots of bars. one of the nice things is the rooftop bars off of Bay Street. the best is at the market-pavillion inn. right at the corner of market street and bay street. there is another one that is alright at vendu inn. its actually two levels of bar
on the roof. i went there during dead week senior year of college and then when we were there this time with the limeys off the boat.
the last photo here is george washington... its in washington park which is just off from the four courts. the corner of the street where the city hall, one of the churches, the federal courthouse, and state courthouse all meet. i kinda lile to call it the apotheosis of washington... sure, i realize that the apotheosis of washington is also the name of a fresco in the capitol dome... but i think it fits for this picture... just cause well, the angle of the sun almost gives washington a halo, and he's framed with oak branches.
