The Perpetual Tourist

When you fly into the Bermuda airport, assuming it’s not too windy to land, you’ll be greeted by steel drums, friendly customs agents, and a giant pair of pink Bermuda shorts on the entrance to the building — a sight you’ll find all over Bermuda tourism literature and signage. Though the shorts are practically the tiny island nation’s mascot, don’t be fooled into thinking this will be a completely casual vacation. This place is fancy.

You’ll want the shorts for your daytime excursions — the climate is almost always comfortable enough for bare legs — but staying at any of the country’s major resorts, you’ll find there’s a dress code for the dining rooms, and shorts aren’t allowed. The cost tends to match the dress code; this is not a cheap getaway, but I’ve found it’s worth the expense and the risks of traveling through the legendary and notorious Bermuda Triangle.

The 22-square-mile nation is located about 700 miles due east of the Carolinas in the Atlantic Ocean, though the weather here is more like Florida’s year-round warmth. Though still technically a colony of the UK, Bermuda has its own currency which is interchangeable with the US Dollar. Both currencies are accepted anywhere on the island, so there’s no need to do a money exchange when you arrive.

As in Britain, cars drive on the left side of the road, though you’ll find that roads and vehicles are not much more than an afterthought here. There are strict laws in Bermuda that keep the roads from getting crowded. There is a national speed limit of 35kph (22mph), and tourists are not legally permitted to rent cars or drive here. But you don’t need a license for a moped, which is one of the preferred methods of travel for most locals. The Pompano Beach Club, where I’ve been staying, rents these scooters out to guests to get around the islands. Alternatives are taxis (I still haven’t figured out how the taxi fees work — they have meters, but I think it’s a flat fee per person, and it’s not cheap), busses, and ferries. Nothing goes very fast, but then again, nothing is very far away.

Bermuda has all the standard coastal, warm-weather attractions like fishing, swimming, diving, and golf, but one thing that sets this destination apart from others is what’s in the water. The islands are surrounded by a reef that has been the demise of many a ship over the past few centuries. One of the most popular attractions here are the dozens of shipwrecks around the island, which are preserved and protected by national law. You can see some of these wrecks as you walk along the coastline, or to get a closer look, you can go diving to sunken ships around the reef. With dozens of these long lost vessels surrounding the islands, it’s no wonder the Bermuda Triangle has such a reputation.

After a long day of sightseeing, you can come back to your hotel bar and relax with one of Bermuda’s other main attractions: the rum. Available in Duty Free stores in airports, this makes a great souvenir for your friends back home — much better than keychains and t-shirts.

If you have trouble walking, Bermuda may not be an ideal vacation spot. It’s a very hilly place, and I’ve found that most of the resorts are not easy to get around in a wheelchair, though the staff here at Pompano will go out of their way to help you out in any way you need. One of our waiters volunteered to carry an elderly woman up and down the stairs to the main restaurant each night. You just don’t find service like that in the US (but you do find elevators there).

The people are friendly, the beauty is endless, and the weather is heavenly. As long as a trip to Bermuda won’t break the bank, you should put it high on your to-do list. Even when it rains, it’s still a gorgeous place to be.

I used to be a corporate monkey who stretched my two weeks of vacation time as widely as possible, but never wide enough to accommodate anything that much resembled a real vacation at all.  I did become the master of the weekend getaway, though.  At 5 o’clock every Friday (okay, more like 4:30), I would walk out of my office and take off for a weekend adventure, milking that weekend for every minute, giving myself the opportunity to forget the office, if just for two and a half days.

When winter weather seems like it’s here to stay, rather than complaining about the cold, take advantage of the opportunity for some snow sports.  Call up some friends and organize a caravan to the nearest ski slopes for a weekend together skiing, snowboarding, tubing, and drinking warm drinks by the fireplace at night. 

It will be tempting to organize such a trip on one of the winter’s many holiday weekends, because you’ve got an extra day.  I’d urge you to resist this appeal and instead use the long weekends for relaxation around your house.  Rates are higher on holidays and resorts and slopes are twice as crowded.  You may have an extra day, but I don’t think it’s worth it for this kind of trip.  You’ll pay more and spend more time waiting in line at the ski lifts and cafeteria lines than you will on the snow.

For folks who aren’t skiers or snowboarders, most ski resorts offer lessons for an hour or so on your first day to get you started.  And if you never quite get the hang of it, there’s always snow tubing, which is also offered at most resorts.  I particularly enjoy snow tubing because it requires absolutely no strength or skill, and you’re almost never sore at the end of it.

When you travel with a group of your friends, you can split the cost of a comfy mountain cabin near the slopes for a nice change from the overpriced ski resort hotels.  Look for something with a fireplace — you’ll want it after a long day in the snow, and it will provide just the kind of relaxation you need to get back to the office on Monday feeling refreshed.

Before getting into the reasons to buy a second home in the Hamptons, let’s first address the housing crisis that’s been all over the news for the last year. Now is a miserable time to sell a house. That’s making a mess for owners and developers, but this is good news for people looking to buy property — if you have stable enough finances to comfortably take on a new mortgage. Assuming you can handle the finances, the ball is completely in your court as a buyer. With more and more homes for sale flooding the market (there are over 5,000 properties for sale in the Hamptons right now), you as the buyer have the freedom to take your time, negotiate your own terms, and walk away from a deal that doesn’t meet your expectations. As sellers get impatient and desperate, the housing market begins to look like a giant clearance sale. So don’t let the news about the housing crisis scare you out of looking for a vacation home now. It’s not a bad market for everyone.

So why do you want a house in the Hamptons?

Everything about the Hamptons exudes style — especially the houses.  This is a great place to host a party,  or to escape for a quiet weekend of R&R.  Every home is near a beach, and outside of the peak summer season, you can practically have the beaches all to yourself.

Even in the popular summer months, you won’t find the beaches nearly as crowded as some other major tourist destinations.  This is largely due to the residential nature of the Hamptons — no skyrise hotels line the shores like other east coast beaches.

Some homeowners live in the Hamptons year round.  It’s a much quieter place outside the peak season, but there are enough people around to keep the area alive and businesses open.  For shopping and dining, you’ll find strip malls with luxury boutiques and cafes in the downtown areas, mostly away from the beaches, designed in ways that give the area a quaint-but-sophisticated small town feeling.

The climate in the Hamptons is generally comfortable.  You’ll have four seasons a year, with cold (but not too snowy) winters and hot summers that will make your backyard pool your favorite hangout.

Owning your own vacation home means pets are always welcome, and dogs will love having the run of the beaches in your neighborhood. 

Whether you’re looking to buy a getaway cottage or a sprawling mansion of a second home, the Hamptons are a great place to start your real estate search.  With all the rich and famous that you’ll have for neighbors, your housewarming party could be the next hot item on Page Six.

Growing up just a few hours away from the nation’s capital, I visited the city several times per year, whether it was for field trips, family excursions, or work purposes.  And though I will probably never think of DC as one of America’s best cities, I can honestly say that it’s a great place to visit, and it still holds appeal for me even after many trips.

There’s no way you can see and do everything DC has to offer in just a day or weekend, so if you live far away, it’s a great place to spend a week of vacation. 

When deciding where to stay, you’ll want to pick a place that’s near a metro line.  The main tourist area is the National Mall, where you’ll find lots of museums, monuments, and usually a protest or two on any given day — but there’s so much more to the city than just this one small area, so you’ll want to pick up a metro card and plan to ride around a bit.

If you want a cheap place to stay, your best bet is one of the outer suburbs in Maryland or Virginia, which can be about a 45 minute metro ride into the heart of the city.  But my favorite neighborhood in DC is Adams Morgan, which is also home to one of my favorite hotels, the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. 

Like everything else in the city, rooms here will cost you quite a bit, but the luxurious accommodations are well worth the cost, in my opinion.  The hotel features an Old English Pub among several other in house dining options, and is conveniently located right on the subway line.  It’s a short walk from here to the National Zoo, where adults and children alike can easily spend a whole day. 

One great thing about DC is that most of the attractions are free.  The Zoo and all the monuments and museums have no admission fee — they just get your money at the gift shops and restaurants. 

After a day of sightseeing, you can return to your hotel in Adams Morgan for a change of clothes, then step outside into the middle of one of the hippest night scenes in the city.  It’s where all the young people come to eat, drink, and be (mostly) naked after dark.  For laid back and delicious, but with less of a wild streak, I recommend the 24-hour Tryst coffeehouse.

For a list of special events happening this year in DC, visit the Washington Tourism website here.

What do you call two days of rain in Oregon?

A weekend.

I got that one from a local in Portland who then assured me that it doesn’t always rain in Oregon.  Sometimes it snows.  Nevertheless, I still say it’s beautiful here and there are lots of things worth getting a bit wet for.

When you come to Oregon from far away, the only easy way to get here is through the Portland International Airport, which has a lot of tourist appeal itself.  With art and unique architecture filling every part of the building, it’s certainly the most interesting airport I’ve ever seen. 

Once you’ve landed, you won’t need a car to experience Portland.  The city has a great public transit system that runs on biofuels.  Take the light rail or a streetcar to the hotel of your choice, and then plan to take in the rest of your vacation on foot.  The mostly flat geography and the numbered streets make the city very pedestrian friendly.  Just be sure you have a good raincoat, and don’t bother blow drying your hair.

The first place I visited in Portland was Powell’s Books.  All the locals told me I had to check it out, that I’d never seen anything like it.  Well, I have seen something like it, but I admit you don’t come by a bookstore like this just any day.  Powell’s is a three-story sprawling mammoth of a new & used bookstore, and they claim to have everything.  They didn’t have the two titles I was looking for, so no, they don’t have everything, but if I had been in the market for something a little less Virginia-regional-history, I probably would have found it at Powell’s, so I won’t let that sour my impressions of the place.  It’s great.  Go there when you go to Portland.

Aside from the rain, I can’t think of a good reason why you would possibly want a car in Portland.  As you walk the streets of the city, you’ll find some of the friendliest locals in America, a plethora of cafes and pubs at which to rest your walking legs, and best of all, the Horse Project. 

The sidewalks of Portland date back to the nineteenth century, and hundreds of iron horse rings remain from days when folks used to park their horses instead of their cars.  A local artist started the Horse Project as a way to get people to take notice of this piece of history by securing tiny plastic horses to the rings all over the city.  They’re not so numerous that they’re obvious — you still have to look for them — but there are enough of them that pedestrians who keep their eyes peeled will surely spot a few of them.

As a big city, much larger even than Oregon’s capital city of Salem, Portland has plenty of things to see and do, from professional sports and museums to fancy restaurants and nightclubs, but it’s Portland’s beer that separates the city from other metropolitan centers. 

You can’t walk two blocks in Portland without passing a pub, most of which are independent and many of which offer unique microbrews.  The local king of beer is McMenamins, which also makes its own wines and distills its own liquors, but the locals I met directed me to Hedge House, a pub that is literally a house, right in the middle of a residential area, which serves New Old Lompoc brews and some of the tastiest pub fare I’ve ever had.

With everything to see and do (and eat and drink!) in Portland, it’s a great city to visit for a few days.  But when you’ve had enough of the big city, it’s only a short trip to one of Oregon’s many natural wonders.  Wherever you’re headed in Oregon, though, don’t just fly into the airport and skip town immediately.  Portland is definitely worth some of your travel time.

I started my six day stay in Reno with a great day both at the bridge table and the blackjack table. Between sessions of bridge (for fun, not money), I’d sit at the $5 blackjack table and slowly work my way up from the $100 that I started with. I did quite well and, of course, was hooked. That’s how they get you, of course.

I thought I had it all figured out when I was up nearly a thousand bucks after a couple of days in the casino, playing only blackjack, but with just one day left in my stay here, I’ve lost most of what I won, so I guess I really don’t have all the answers. After all, these places would never make money if there was a guaranteed way to beat the house. But I have had a great time, and regardless of what I know about blackjack, I’ve gained some experience and do have some casino tips for anyone who wants to go gambling on their next vacation.

• Never gamble more than you’re willing to lose. Set a limit and stick to it. If you don’t want it to go fast, play the low-limit games.
• Having good company at the table is almost as important as playing your cards well. I’ve met a lot of people sitting around the blackjack table this week. Win or lose, I always have a good time when the people are friendly and into the game. Players who sit back and just stare at their own cards without talking make the atmosphere tense.
• Same goes for dealers. Having a jovial dealer makes the table fun. Talk to your dealers. The cards won’t change, but you’ll enjoy yourself more.
• Be polite. Tip your dealer. Don’t heckle other players. Tip your dealer. If you’re a smoker, don’t blow smoke into the faces of the non-smoking players at your table. Tip your dealer.
• Quit while you’re ahead. I know this one from experience. Being up $150 is nice, but it sucks to know that if you’d bailed a little sooner, you could’ve finished plus $800 instead. Set an upper limit as well as a lower limit before you sit down to gamble. If you hit either, it’s time to leave the table.
• Sign up for the free comp card. Most casinos have free programs where you earn free stuff while you gamble. You can use the rewards for any bills within the hotel/casino, and it’s free to sign up, so why not?

I’ve had a good time here in Reno. We’ve been staying at the Grand Sierra Resort, which is actually a little outside of the city. It’s a large hotel and casino complex, with several floors of time share condos as well. This is definitely one of the nicer hotel stays I had in 2007, and the employees here have been great. I can almost always find something to complain about, but this place really has been wonderful. I don’t have any other Reno experience to compare it to, but I’d still recommend the Grand Sierra to anyone looking to vacation here.

Reno is not a big city, and it’s relatively easy to get around. The best food in town, as far as I can tell, is at the Black Bear Diner, where the portions are huge, the prices are low, and you can get breakfast all day. The menu doesn’t have many vegetarian options, and I don’t think anything vegan, but as long as you like breakfast fare, you can find plenty of good food without meat.

Today is a day for driving. We’re likely heading back to Oregon, which will take most of the day. Luckily, there’s a lot of good football on the radio today. One of my favorite things about the west coast is being able to wake up and catch a game before lunch. It’s definitely the right coast for a morning person.

Happy New Year!