Arrived!

The Edinburgh – London leg of our journey wasn’t bad at all. We didn’t realise until the day, but we had business class tickets, allowing us access to the BA lounge and an in-flight three course meal. We are very much used to our budget Ryanair flights with a crap coffee and KitKat meal deal, so it made for a very welcome treat and a great start to our adventure.

Unfortunately  the rest of the journey did not run as smoothly, and the surprises to come were much less pleasant than complimentary G&Ts.

The first issue being the flight from Gatwick to Bermuda. There was a problem with the plane which required an engineer to fix – something no one wants to hear before any flight, and espeically when you boarded the plane TWO HOURS before this announcement. This delay meant that before we had even set off we had been sat in our seats (unfortunately not business class for this leg of the journey), for 3 hours with another 6.5-7 to go. Luckily another novelty for frequent Ryanair travellers is that of BAs in-flight entertainment which was pretty decent and kept us amused during the long flight. 

we landed around 8pm. The feeling of travelling from the UK to hot a country and the heat hitting you as you exit the plane has to be one of the best feelings. We were both taken back by this – more so than usual – due to the intense heat and humidity, and also the reality that we were finally here after months of stressful preparation.

Our next impression of the island came from the arrivals hall – a little bit dated with no aircon. The long wait in the sweltering heat was however helped by a really charming and kitsch painting of a young Queen Elizabeth II over a wooden fireplace – a fireplace but no aircon… M wasn’t quite as impressed by this as L was. He just would have liked aircon.

The next unpleasant surprise came once we reached the arrivals desk. Since the Work Permit was only approved a couple of days earlier we didn’t have a physical copy of the document and had to go to a special room where someone checked our details on the system. As it turned out, M was on the system but L was not! Fortunately this sort of thing seems to happen all the time so the border guard let both of us in, only L was admitted as a tourist on a 90 stay until her papers come through. Not great but still better than the couple in front of us, neither of whom were on the system!

Having passed immigration, we went through a customs check. At this point we were feeling very pleased that we had packed light as it made it much easier to estimate (on the spot) the cost of the contents of our suitcases. The delayed flight and missing immigration paperwork meant it was quite late by this point and it seemed like the customs official wanted to go home, so he didn’t ask too many questions or check our bags very thoroughly, which is just as well because M forgot to declare his wetsuit and the scuba diving kit.

These delays meant that we were literally the last people leaving the airport for the day at around 10pm. Fortunately our driver, hired by the Firm, was still there waiting for us and we were soon on our way to the hotel.

We sat in silence for the duration of taxi ride to the hotel, both with wide eyes and smiles. We had expected the island to be beautiful, but the reality exceeded our expectations by far. Even at night, the island was stunning, with colourful houses and lush green vegetation.

Arriving at the hotel was not the end of our suprises for the day though, because the room was booked only in M’s name and the receptionist did not quite know what to do when two people showed up (even though it was a double room). Eventually we managed to persuade her to give us the key. We got to bed around midnight and were very soon fast asleep.

First impressions: hot, so very hot and humid; things didn’t go as smoothly as planned; frogs are making a lot of noise at night – but the island is stunningly beautiful.