Jan 25
🔝5️⃣. Next and last up in my annual listing of Top Fives is Restaurants. I tell people that when I am travelling with work I’m either eating in Michelin starred restaurants, or sitting at an airport gate munching my way through a packet of crisps and overdosing on Haribo.
I did have some great meals last year, and occasionally I took the family! Here are my 2025 Top Five Favourite Restaurants 🍕
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ I stayed in 62 hotels last year. 62. I haven’t worked out the number of nights because it might be debilitating. Many of these hotels represented just a bed and a shower on a work trip. Others however were calming sanctuaries of joy and family time.
I’ve rattled 62 down to 5 plus a couple of honourable mentions. Here are My Top Fives Favourite Hotels from 2025 🏩
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ I have said this before, but walking around Sarasota’s downtown you could be forgiven for forgetting that it is in Florida, other than the sandhill cranes flying over Sarasota Bay and the sun high in the sky.
We’ve lived here now for more than two years and there is still so much more to explore, but these were My Top Five Favourite Sarasota Things from last year.🦩
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ A lot of planes meant a lot of TV Shows. Plenty of series watched, although many good, there wasn’t I felt a load that were distinguishable.
Five were still hard to pick, but I gave it a go. Below are My Five Favourite TV Shows from 2025 📺
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ Another year, another list of my Top Fives. We will begin with Places. This year’s travels were almost entirely work related, and unfortunately a lot the places I visited were on repeat.
We did have one big family holiday, and that was to Qatar as we sought to open our daughter’s mind to another culture. The peninsula on the Arabian Gulf therefore took top spot, and here is a list of My Top Fives Favourite Places 🧳
Please click for more🔝5️⃣. Up next in my annual collection of Top Five’s is Restaurants🍖. I was lucky to eat in some fantastic restaurants last year and selecting just five wasn’t easy.
After a lot of thought I did settle on five, and here are my Top Five 2024 Favourite Restaurants 🍖
Please click for moreI used to be such a movie watcher, but for some reason I just can’t sit through a film anymore, but strangely I can binge a TV show and did I plenty in 2024.
I’m not sure it was a vintage TV year, although I’m not always watching the most up to date shows, as you’ll probably see from my list. These are My Top Five 2024 Favourite TV Shows 📺
Please click for more🔝5️⃣. I stayed in 39 hotels last year, over a hundred nights not in my own bed, and there were plenty of AirBnB stays too, but I can’t get excited about them.
I do like a hotel, especially fancy ones, although sadly they weren’t always fancy. Anyway, I have selected a handful and these are my 2024 Top Five Favourite Hotels 🏨
Please click for more🔝5️⃣. My next of my annual Top Five’s is on our doorstep. We have lived in Sarasota on the Gulf Coast of Florida since August 2023, and candidly haven’t done anywhere near the exploring we’d like to, but I’ve done enough to put together a list.
Next of my 2024 look back’s is my Top Five Favourite Sarasota Things 🌞
Please click for more🔝5️⃣. Welcome to my annual Top Five series where without any hint of shame I write about my favourite things from the past year.
Back in the day I listed a lot more of these, but I’ve narrowed it down over time, and I’ll start with one of my most craved obsessions, and that of travel. So, I’ll begin with my Top Five Favourite Places 🌇.
Please click for more🔝5️⃣. Up next in my annual collection of Favourite things are Restaurants🥕. My ever expanding waistline is evidence of my propensity for eating out and that does not come without a lot of effort, and much good fortune to eat in some very nice places.
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ They have been saying travel is back. I don’t think I ever got on a flight last year when there was an empty seat. Prices are high but people want their lives back.
I stayed at 19 hotels in 2022, as I had done in 2021. Last year that number increased to 32 due more than anything to work, meaning settings were function over thrills.
Please click for more🔝5️⃣. I was spoilt for choice for great TV in 2023. My list of enjoyable TV shows was never ending and then narrowing it down to five was extremely difficult.
So much binge-worthy television out there, and I am always on the look out for a show I may have missed.
Please click for moreThe return of my annual 🔝5️⃣ list begins with Favourite Places 🌃. I did what seemed like endless travelling this year especially since we moved stateside, but only an overnight pitstop with my dog in Savannah, Georgia was uncharted territory for me, so 2023 was really about rediscovering places.
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ I forgot to throw my last couple of these out there. I have two more 2022 Top Five’s to share, and this one is TV Shows. I do love to get lost in a good TV drama, and there were plenty to choose from last year.
After much deliberation these were my Top Five 2022 Favourite TV Shows 📺
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ In 2023 I stayed in the same amount of hotels than I did the year previous which was 19, although that year most of those came in the second part of the year.
Still, five was hard to narrow down last year, but led by our summer holiday location in Puerto Rico I have below selected My Top Five 2022 Favourite Hotels 🏨
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ My next 2022 Top Five is places. Travel was better in 2022 if not extensive and if I tell you until recently Accrington was on my list, then that tells me I need to get out more..
We did a few trips, nowhere new or too far, but were lucky to sample some new parts of some old places. Here are my 2022 Top Five Favourite Places 🏞️
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ A little bit of annual self-indulgence so apologies in advance. My 2022 Top Five’s begin with food.
The restaurant industry is in recovery mode after the pandemic, but sadly restaurant closures in the UK have been worse since as owners wrestle with rising energy costs, staff shortages and simply people not having the disposable income to splurge on going out to dinner.
Please click for more🔝5️⃣. My final 2021 Top Five I’ve saved for my favourite Addicks’ matches. By my calculation we played 58 times throughout 2021 although picking five hardly evoked a rush of everlasting memories.
Thanks to Charlton TV I see more games a season now than I have ever done in 47 years of support. Even in my most active Charlton going days I probably saw 35-40 matches a season depending on cup runs…. okay 36 then 😄.
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ Two more of these Top Five’s to share. Bermuda is like no other place in the World in so many different ways. It’s is peculiar and beautiful in equal measures.
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ Back in the saddle to finish off the last few 2021 Top Fives. Plenty more couch time, sorry I mean working from home in 2021, and many good TV shows to binge. Here were my Top Five 2021 Favourite TV Shows 📺:
Please click for more🔝5️⃣. Next up on my look back at the year that wasn’t of 2021 is My Top Five Favourite Places. Not quite as limited on exploration as the year before, nevertheless the five were relatively easy to select.
There was nowhere new, but plenty of places revisited, one in particular was long overdue. Here are my 2021 Top Five Favourite Places 🌇
Please click for more🔝5️⃣. Here we are back at the beginning of a fresh year, and therefore my most recent collection of annual Top Five’s.
In 2020 I stayed in just 4 hotels, but in 2021 I stayed in 19, and the counter only started in June. It was good to get back out there, but a warning for those yet to throw money at hotel stays — there are still many hospitality restrictions depending on the hotel and location, and do not expect the same level of service(s) as hotels struggle with staffing and personnel. Also, as you’d expect very little investment has being going into hotels within the past two years, so also presuppose tired and neglected properties at inflated prices as hotel owners attempt to claw back some money.
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ I have now been in Bermuda for twelve and a half years. Classic came for four, and you know the rest. As idyllic as the 21 sq. mile island is, the fact I split my time between the UK, the USA and if we were lucky some adventurous holidays, then this small little isle with it’s three main roads never seemed too suffocating.
🔝5️⃣ A global pandemic has curtailed a lot of eating out, and it has been the year of the take-away. Even Bermuda now has a delivery service 25 years after Pizza Hut first started doing it.
Like elsewhere for long parts of this year restaurants were shut on the island (fortunately for us they are open again although with plenty of restrictions), and we are lucky that for most of the time we are able to sit outside.
🔝5️⃣ Plenty of time in 2020 to watch the box you’d think, although I have to say for very long periods I struggled so much separating work from home that I would settle for something mindless over immersing myself into a proper series.
🔝5️⃣ Happy New Year to you all.
I’ve been doing my annual CA Top Fives for more than a decade, but there has never been a year like 2020.
There were always barriers to travel, whether self made, man made or natural forces, but never before was the world closed to exploration. For the ‘normal person’ anyhow. Who knows what the world looks like after the vaccination seizes control back from the virus and allows us to venture outside again, but all I know is I want to see it, old haunts, favourite spots, new places.
In saying that one of the small positives of being stuck at home in 2020 was more family time, and more time to actually spend with them on our own doorstep. Bermuda is hard not to appreciate, and if I include my home, then I actually can stretch to five places I spent some time in during this pandemic infected year.
Back on my doorstep then for my next 2019 Top Five. No Michelin stars, no movie premieres, no historical monuments, but local small scale stuff and fun things that peaked my interest.
To continue my January look back at my 2019, these are My Top Five Favourite Bermuda Things
My next 2019 Top Five picks surround food, and, well, more food.
My waistline is evidence of lots of good eating out last year, although I did seem to do that mostly in Miami and New York. It was tough to select my Top Five Favourite Restaurants but I narrowed it down to a handful in the end plus some notable mentions.
Next on my agenda for my 2019 Top Five’s is Hotels. Those that know me or have had more than a cursory glance at this Blog will have worked out that I have a fascination with hotels. My travels were way down on previous years, but I managed to still have 20 locations to pick from and these were my Top Five Favourite Hotels:
I love a good TV series like the next man. There is so much good stuff about these days and with Disney joining Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and others in competing with all the mainstream providers there is a battle for good content.
So, onto my next 2019 Top Five picks and my Top Five Favourite TV Shows that I watched in 2019, which doesn’t mean at all that they were all first aired last year.
I spent 80 nights in hotels in 2018 staying at 29 different ones. No wonder the other half says I’m never at home.
Picking my Top Five Favourite Hotels from 2018 was extremely difficult as I was very fortunate to stay in some great places, a few I’d been to before such as last year’s favourite, the 1 Hotel in Miami.
Last one from last year. I like to explore, I like to travel, I like to eat.
I keep a list of the restaurants I visit, mostly away from Bermuda, and gee, last year was a difficult choice. It’s a little New York centric, but pride of place goes to an absolute gastronomical experience in my kinda town, Chicago. There were two or three great places that never made My Top Five Favourite Restaurants from 2018, but these ones did:
Next on my personal Top Five’s from 2018 are right here on my doorstep. Bermuda is not the place to come for big restaurant openings, star-studded theatre, cool music concerts, cutting edge art shows or world class museums, it’s so much simplier here. The outdoors, the beach, the ocean.
I gave it some thought and these are My Top Five Favourite Bermuda Things from last year:
To coincide with tonight’s Golden Globes, I thought I’d push this one out.
I watch less and less telly, real time TV anyway and Bermuda unsuprisingly is light years away from Catch Up and iPlayer etc but Netflix, Hula and iTunes are our friend and I can sit on the couch or on a plane and binge through a season of a TV show easily.
I’m always on the hunt for recommendations by the way, but these were my Top Five Favourite TV Shows that I watched last year, bearing in mind I may have been late to jump on them.
Time then for my annual self indulgence. I’ve always been a list and top of this or worst of that sort of bloke. My daughter is the same. What’s your top five she will say after a day out or when staring at the Christmas tree baubles. Anyway I will try to plough through a few of these this month, so apologies in advance.
Last on my short agenda of Top Five’s is Places. My list for 2017 is a mix of old and new. I was lucky to get to some familiar places again last year such as Barcelona, North Fork, Beaver Creek and San Francisco, all of which I love but although they didn’t make my favourite five, a couple of my old tried-and-true did.
So here are my Top Five Favourite Places that I visited in 2017:
The second of my belated 2017 Top Five’s is Hotels. I stayed in 26 different hotels last year, but after much back and forth I’ve chosen five, so please join me to test the bouncyness of the bed, the 500 thread sheets and copious amount of pillows that usually end up on the floor as I guide you through My 2017 Top Five Favourite Hotel’s:
I got a little waylaid with these, well actually I forgot. But selfishly I wanted to post them, so close your eyes if you’re not interested in a little narcissism.
I going to post my final three 2017 Top Five’s in quick succcesion starting with Restaurants. Picking five wasn’t easy but I’ve had a crack so these were my Top Five Favourite Restaurants of 2017:
Next on the agenda of my Top Fives is TV Shows. Somehow over the years, not helped by having just two cinema screens on the island, I rarely watch a movie, but I love to get stuck into a TV series. By the way I’m always looking for recommendations, so any suggestions are much appreciated.
Bermuda has been home for nine and half years which is scary in so many ways. One of my problems with living on a small island in the Atlantic Ocean, and I appreciate this for some has it’s advantages, is that rarely do things change. Yet in the recent year or so brought about by the Americas Cup, I’ve witnessed a renewed confidence in the local economy and a surge in young and talented Bermudians willing to challenge the status quo.
The Island has seen an uptick in overseas visitors and they have witnessed a much more thriving island, Hamilton in particular where autonomous stores and places to grab a drink or food, often owned by young creative individuals or partnerships compete with the established but often humdrum and uninspiring names, all owned by just a handful wealthy families.
The lowest crowd ever to watch a Charlton first team match beating the Bradford Members Cup tie at Selhurst in 1986! What an utterly crackpot idea the Football League’s Checkatrade Trophy is. Nonetheless it does give Karl Robinson an opportunity to assess Jason Euell’s young players, and although he was critical of the performance after, it was good to know that Steve Avory’s factory line is still whirring.
For the few that were there most were impressed with young debutant Jamie Mascoll. The 20-year old has had quite an acceleration into the first team. Spotted by Steve Avory at Dulwich Hamlet, where he wasn’t even a first team regular, Mascoll has impressed in the U23’s playing left and right back as well as further up in midfield. Good luck to him, and great to see another Catford boy doing well.
My final Top Five selection from last year are things closer to home. Bermuda has much natural beauty, and outdoors is an alfresco activity heaven but beyond that it lacks some modern day indulgences. So I’ve avoided all the natural beauty, which I should remind myself I must never take for granted, and chosen some oddments that make life in Bermuda a little more sweeter.
So, here are my Top Five Favourite Bermuda Things from last year:
I’m a big TV series watcher, and there are some great shows out there both sides of the Atlantic. I often watch them belatedly taking recommendations from friends and then downloading whole seasons for airplane journeys or quiet evenings. I’m always up for new shows, so I’d like to hear any new suggestions.
It was tough to pick a Top Five, but I eventually did so here are my Top Five Favourite TV Shows that I watched in 2016:
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Next up in my Top Fives involves eating, which I appear to do a lot off. I am lucky to eat out a lot, although mostly not with people I would hand pick, but still I did get to some very nice places in 2016, with I’ll add some very nice people .
Here are my Top Five Favourite Restaurants of last year:
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My 2nd listing of my 2016 Top Five Favourites. I stayed in 27 different hotels in 2016. Wow, that even surprised myself! But I do love a hotel, especially sumptuous fluffy slippers, flouncy beds and bubbly shower gel type ones.
So, here goes my 2016 Top Five Favourite hotels starts here:
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My annual review of the best things I did or saw or tasted last year. I love to travel and got to a few new places in 2016 and revisited a couple of old favourites such as Chicago and San Francisco, but those two didn’t make the list of my Top Five Favourite Places of last year, but these did:
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The last of my 2015 Top Fives and I will end on a musical note with my 2015 Top Five Favourite Albums. I have probably missed a few good ones, and I am always looking for recommendations but from those that I downloaded and admired these were the ones I kept going back to:
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A man has to eat, and I love to. Eating out for me remains an experience, and in our house we have over 50 signed menus framed hanging on walls.
A restaurant experience is not only about the food, but it is the occasion and the memories. These were my 2015 Top Five Favourite Restaurants
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I’ve got a little waylaid in these first couple of weeks of the New Year. A little bit of Charlton stuff going on, so I have been remiss on my 2015 Top Five things and I know this is what you really want to read.
So, where was I? Ok, let’s take a snap of my Top Five Favourite Television Shows of 2015.
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My Favourite Things would not be my favourite things if it didn’t include hotels. One day I will find the perfect place and never leave. In 2015 I stayed in 21 different hotels, a smaller number than the year before as I did less work travel.
So come with me and feel the 500 thread count and play with the remote control blinds and find out which were my Top Five Favourite Hotels from my travels last year:
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I have now lived in Bermuda over 7 years, 2 more than I lived in Chicago, which every time I think about it just sounds more incomprehensible. Chicago was a place where everyday I experienced something new. I never found a routine because the city would always throw up alternatives.
Bermuda is not like that, little changes apart from the tide of the sapphire blue Atlantic Ocean. However this year the island finally appeared to come out of the other side of a tough recession and there is a very noticeable wind of optimism coming in with that tide.
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The first of my 2015 Top Fives, and an annual look back at the stuff that sticks out in my memory as something a bit special.
I’ve done this for many years now and always welcome your comments. Some Top Fives are regular features, some others I mix up a little bit, but one list I always compile is the Favourite Places I found myself in during the past year.
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With Charlton dominating an eventful January and already early February on my Blog, and rightly so, My 2014 Top 5’s have got pushed out, but I’m going to finish with one more, a subject close to my heart, hotels.
Future Grandchildren – when I am old put me in a plush hotel not an expensive nursing home, and I’ll let you visit.
Here are My 2014 Top 5 Favourite Hotels:
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Just a few more 2014 Top 5’s to share. Two of my favourite hobbies are eating out and going to new places and I managed to combine that a lot in 2014.
The fact that three of my Top 5 Restaurants are in Miami tells me that I spent a lot of time in the city in 2014 and also that Miami’s restaurant scene, historically listless, is booming.
I was lucky to eat in a number of great places, so I also picked a couple of Honourable Mentions, but firstly these were My 2014 Top 5 Favourite Restaurants:
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Next up in my 2014 Top Five’s is Albums.
I thought 2014 was a fine year for music, and I unearthed a fair few new bands thanks to either recommendations or pure luck and there were some impressive returns from a few of my favourites.
It was tough finalising My 2014 Top 5 Favourite Albums and thus I have named a couple of Honourable Mentions, but this is it:
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I hope you all had a great Christmas, and I know you have been wondering what Santa missed. Well, I am here to tell you. My next installment of my 2014 Top Five’s.
Christmas always reminds me of great family television back at home, but sadly Bermuda is a slave to the American networks and cable channels, which I long gave up watching, apart from a couple of channels, and instead became a fan of the box set. Not interrupted by adverts, schedule changes or time zones, the other half and I fly through them at a rate of knots. Equally whenever I travel my iPad is always juiced up with the latest download.
It was another great year for TV drama, but I have my picks and you need to bear in mind I may well have watched them after they were released on television here or in the UK.
Here are My 2014 Top 5 Favourite TV Shows:
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Admit it, the posts you have been waiting for. Chicago Addick’s Top 5 Favourite’s of the past year.
I am going to begin this year’s Top 5’s with Places. I got to some fascinating spots in 2014 and these were my Top 5 Favourite Places, with one in particular surprising me.
1) Mexico City
Some people were aghast that we’d take ourselves and our daughter to Mexico City, but I am a huge sucker for cities and will give anywhere the benefit of the doubt and sure enough with five centuries of history there were gems and awe-inspiring moments aplenty, none other than the area known as Zocalo (photo), the vibrant heart of the Centro Historical where a compact grid of streets poured fervour and ceremony out of every street corner.
Gritty, overcrowded, smelly, polluted, busy and dangerous are all words associated with Mexico City, but beneath the warnings we saw some terrific architecture, proud monuments, a lot of green and pleasant land and happy people.
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I do love a Top Five and what better day to share with you my Top Five Halloween Horror Films:
1. The Shining
Released in 1980. A family with Jack Nicholson as Dad become the winter housesitters of a hotel in the mountains of Colorado. Nicholson’s character Jack Torrance is writing a book but the isolated hotel’s ghosts take hold of him and insanity takes over Torrance played magnificently by Nicholson whose face bursting through that door still sends shivers down my spine today.
Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd also starred.
Directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Adapted from a Stephen King novel.
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Well, this is it then, World Cup Final day. It seems like an age ago when I watched the opening game with some mates in a pub in Sidcup, but a month later, the fútbol de carnaval journey is almost over, and whilst the words ‘best ever’ have been on every fan, journalist and pundit’s lips every day since, the Brazilians may never recover!
Proclaiming anything the ‘best ever’ until it has ended is a little premature, so the world waits to see if today’s final can provide us with a fitting finale to what has been an extraordinary World Cup in more ways than one.
So, as I sit here this morning like a kid on Christmas Eve and wondering what is going to fill my head until August 9th, I have compiled one, actually two, of my Chicago Addick Top 5’s.
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And the final piece on my 2013 Top 5’s. Charlton’s defining moments could mean pretty much anything, but I have attempted to pick five that stood out in my mind from last year as particular landmarks to me.
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Music is next up on Chicago Addick’s 2013 Top 5’s. I have been a regular buyer of albums since my early teenage years and 2013 was no different.
There were a number of good listens, but after some consideration, here are my Top 5 Favourite Albums:
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London
