Taryn's Mad Hatter Adventures

6/10/23

I was so excited for today! I had been in Bermuda one time before on a Royal Caribbean cruise when I was in high school. I remember the beach being AMAZING! We were due to dock at 1:00 p.m. at the Royal Naval Dockyard, and stay docked there overnight with an all aboard time of 12:30 p.m. on 6/11/23.

Upon waking up around 8:00 a.m., and making it to the Windjammer to eat breakfast…IT WAS RAININGGGGGGG. NOOOOOOOO! Our perfect beach day was going to be ruined. I mean it was pouring! They even had special mats on the decks so you wouldn’t slip. We were still sailing into Bermuda and had about 4 hours to go. I had not seen land yet.

This was my breakfast today:

The usual!

We hung around on the deck for a little bit just deciding what to do next. They were announcing the cancellation of several excursions that were booked directly through the cruise ship. Luckily, we didn’t book anything official. Our plan was to just get off the ship and go to the beach via taxi or shuttle bus.

Around 11:00 a.m. we went out onto Deck 4 and LAND HO! You can see how overcast and windy it was! It was also chilly!

We were still going to power onto the beach. The rain had stopped by the time we docked around 12:30 p.m. but it was still cloudy.

We were off the ship at 1:05 p.m. and heading to the taxi/shuttle area.

I had done some research and the cost for the Minibus to Horseshoe Bay was $7.00 per person, per direction. The taxi was $42.00 for 5-7 people. My mom had opted to stay on the ship, so there were 5 of us. One note…for the minibus, you had to wait for it to fill up before it departed. This was not a problem in our case, because everyone was getting off the ship at the same time and they were filling up rather quickly. Another note…the cruise line was offering this as an excursion for $35.00 per person. It included transportation to/from Horseshoe Bay. The same exact thing we were doing. And you had a set return time.

We chose the minibus and it filled up very quickly. Here are a few videos from our drive across the island:

Our driver was nice enough to pull over to the side of the road so we could get a video looking down at Horseshoe Bay. It was BEAUTIFUL!

THAT WATER!

If you take a taxi or minibus, they will drop you off right at the beach. If you take the public transportation which is also available, they will drop you off at the top of the hill and you have to walk down the sidewalk to the beach area.

This is the entrance to the beach. There is no cost to enter the beach, but you can rent chairs and umbrellas at this counter on the right.

Since it was just the three of us and the sun was not shining, I opted for just two chairs. The girls rotated between one chair and laying on a towel. After paying, I was given a receipt. There were workers standing right there at the entrance. I gave my receipt to one of them, the most polite teenage boy. He asked where we wanted to sit. We went about halfway down the beach, and he dragged the chairs for us. (I did tip him.) These boys were hard workers! Besides setting up the chairs, tents and umbrellas, they also took food orders and brought to you right on the beach. They never stopped walking up and down the beach the entire time we were there.

It was super overcast still at this point, but it was not raining! The sand was pink, the water was the most gorgeous color, but it felt a little chilly.

There was no time to waste with photos. The scenery was too good!

The view from my seat:

Around 2:30 p.m. it started to fill up a little bit.

We spent the afternoon napping, relaxing, swimming, and eventually walked down to another little cove area that was back near the entrance.

This was actually an Instagram lover’s dream! There were so many good photo spots around here.

We were trying to time this particular photo because the waves were crashing on the rocks behind and shooting up into the air.

I have been to many, many beaches in my life, and this is definitely in the top 3! It’s just breathtaking. We were sad we only had one day here. I would totally come back to Bermuda to stay for a week!

Around 5:00 p.m., we decided to head back to the ship and get ready for dinner. We knew we would be missing our main dining room seating, and were just planning to hit the buffet.

Here’s the menu for the concession stand:

And the seating area:

There were still several people still on the beach as we were leaving.

This is the taxi/minibus pick up area:

Our plan was to take a taxi back to the ship because we didn’t want to wait for the minibus to fill up. The cost was basically the same. We saw a taxi pull up and approached him. He was very nice but technically wasn’t the first taxi in the line, so he tried to find the man who was next in line and couldn’t. I thought that was very nice! Before we entered the vehicle, he used a dust brush to brush the sand off of our feet and bags. The ride back to the ship took about 20-25 minutes.

I hustled onto the ship and tried to find my mom to let her know our plan for dinner. I went to our dining table thinking she would be there but she wasn’t. Our wait staff said she never showed. Decided to go back to the room to shower and she showed up there. She had gone to the buffet to eat.

Up next…Day 3 Dinner and Evening Entertainment!