Jun 26
I’m back in Bermuda after our little sojourn to Miami Beach. We stayed just a couple of miles south of Chaplain Towers in Surfide, the site of Thursday’s building collapse tragedy. We drove by it last Monday to have dinner in Bal Harbour, a condo building in a row of non-descript 1980 oceanfront buildings punctuated occasionally by plush hotels.
My heart goes out to every family and friend waiting on news of loved ones 💔
Please click for moreA little bit of a mini break for the next couple of days as we head to Miami later.
Florida has long moved on from the pandemic and apparently visitor numbers are almost back to pre-Covid times. Double vaccinated Americans are increasingly moving around the country and I expect Miami Beach to be busy.
Please click for moreBermuda’s airport re-opened last week, but I am in no rush to get on a plane. Lockdown has had me constantly thinking of travel, past trips and what future ones look like. I also realized that I never did write about the families trip to the Florida’s Keys at the end of last summer.
The Florida Keys are a coral string of islands that form the southernmost part of the United States. The iconic Overseas Highway runs from Miami to the bottom tip of the keys at Key West. American Industrialist and important developer of the Atlantic Coast of the state of Florida Henry Flagler attempted an ambitious plan to run a train the 160 miles across the 800 islands from Miami in the early 1900’s.
Flagler’s aspiration was to take advantage of the growing but geographically challenging trade between the U.S. and Cuba and the rest of Latin America. Yet despite some innovative engineering, the railroad was continuously hindered by a run of hurricanes but engineers persevered until the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. This CAT 5 devastated the Keys and killed 400 people.
That was the end of Flagler’s project, yet many of the track beds, trestles and bridges remain and form part of today’s Overseas Highway.
I’ve been to Vail in Colorado a fair few times. The first occasion was with a mate well over 20-years ago, that was in the summer time. Two years ago I was there with the family on a ski trip, the time I got myself in a bit of trouble with a Russian mafiosi who tried to steel the other half. That’s for another day and over a few pints. I’ve had the odd day stop there as well, and then I was back there last week, albeit briefly.
So, a well overdue CA Travelogue me thinks.
I woke up far too early in Las Vegas this morning (I did plan to be here) as body clock and eyes were completely out of sync. After a little bit of tossing and turning, my brain kept replaying Matt Smith’s goal, which wasn’t good for the soul, so I went for a walk. Las Vegas in the early hours is a sight to behold I can tell you. Give’s south Bermondsey a run for its money.
I’m out here on a work trip, today was a chill day, but from this evening onwards we have a very busy schedule as we venture all over south and north California. Sleep will be a distant ambition by the time I return home from San Francisco next Saturday.
I forgot how beautiful Sedona is. The 23-mile drive along Highway 89A from Flagstaff around and down the Oak Creek Canyon dropping a couple of thousand feet into Sedona rivals many of the best drives in the United States.
Towering trees line the beds of the Canyon’s mountainsides, whose natural springs are said to have healing powers. There are plenty of stop-off’s to get closer to the beautiful rock formations, and Midgely Bridge, is one. The steel bridge that arches gracefully over the canyon is a proper Kodak moment, or a less fussy iPhone moment if you will.
Mr popular at home this morning as I crashed and banged out of the house at dusk lugging a suitcase for a work trip. I leave behind a family and an island that is bracing it for its first major hurricane in three years.
Hurricane Humberto is moving east-northeast at 7mph and then is due to take a sharp right turn as it finds Bermuda’s warm waters and will roll very close to us as a Cat 2 storm on late Wednesday night.
“You’re taking your 8-year old to Colombia” people said. Well Colombia isn’t the dangerous gang infested place it used to be, and indeed Cartagena never really was, an historic north coast oasis away from drug fuelled murders and kidnapping.
It was this time a year ago I was looking at some places to get a quick getaway for a week, and Colombia kept coming back to me, so despite some other people’s reservations we did it, and it was great.
Cartagena is for the adventurous, the history buff, the coffee lover, the romantic. The walled city is full of majestic churches and palaces, picturesque balcony-lined streets and lively plaza’s.
I’ve spent many a day and weekend in Brighton, in fact our recent family get together was a little flick through my brother and I’s memory book of younger boozier and clubbier days.
We gathered the CA clan together in Brighton for a long overdue get together and I purposely chose the Hotel Du Vin to stay because of it’s location within The Lanes.
Very appropriate that I spent today in St George’s, the oldest continuously-inhabited English town in the New World and settled 407 years ago, and three years after Admiral Sir George Somers deliberately beached the ship Sea Venture onto Bermuda’s reef’s to avoid sinking.
Now UNESCO World Heritage site, the town of St George has slowly started to come back to life, helped by regular cruise ship visits, and a couple of good eateries. There was no ship in today but many, and mostly Japanese, visitors were walking around the town’s narrow and colourful streets.
It has a way before it becomes as beautiful as somewhere like Cinque Terre, but the pastel coloured hilly streets still ask to be explored and much work is being carried out on many of the large homes such as Whitehall, for years occupied by the town’s mayors.
13 years I’ve been judging the quality of the quantity of hotel shower gels. I will never get that time back, but fortunately for you I’ve also spent the past 13 years telling you all about it. I always coincide my Shower Gellies™ with that perhaps better known award ceremony in Hollywood, but whilst theirs comes to you from the Dolby Theatre, mine come from my armchair. No, not my shower.
Nestled at 9,000 feet at the bottom of Bachelor Gulch mountain in Colorado is the gigantic dream-like log cabin that is the Ritz Carlton. I’ve been lucky to stay here a number of times and the hotel crowns the mountain range like a Bavarian castle complete with numerous huge log burning fires and a roaming giant St Bernard dog called Bachelor.
I’m no longer a skiier, I was only ever a perennial beginner, and an ACL replacement put paid to my mogul jumping career.
After a journey that took 19 hours I made it to the city of Denver late last night. The steps of the State Capitol building are a mile above sea level giving the town its nickname.
The journey from Bermuda is already a hike, and then I got stuck at Miami airport as our plane was taken out of service due to mechanical reasons and we had to wait for another one, give the crew a break etc, and missed a connection in Dallas, blah blah..
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.
Well the early flight actually. Our traditional pre-Christmas trip to Buckhead in Georgia starts today. Our 7th year in a row for festive fun.
There will be the normal afternoon tea date with Mr & Mrs Claus, that joyous fairytale is still rolling in our house thankfully, helped in no small way by our annual meet up with the Claus’. We will also do the Atlanta Botanical Garden Lights with it’s two million twinkly lights. S’mores and mulled wine will accompany us on our walk around it’s dazzling 30 acres.
We were in Texas back in the February drawn to the Lone Star state by the rodeo, held in the city of San Antonio, which was celebrating it’s 300th birthday. Two million tickets were sold for the The San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo which is spread over two and a bit weeks and city was enveloped in rodeo fever. The whole deal, which as you would expect in Texas, was big and took place in and around the AT&T Center, home to the San Antonio Spurs, who play all their games for a month away from home during rodeo season.
We based ourselves at The Pearl, an historic hotel and foodie emporium, that was long home to the famed Pearl Brewery. It was Otto Koehler and after his death, daughter Emma that made the Pearl Brewery one of the most iconic in America. It survived Prohibition, the Great Depression, two wars and then various ownership struggles and takeovers but finally succumbed to financial problems when then owner Pabst closed it down in 2001.
Mind you with the onset of retro taste buds Pabst, which no longer brews beer, now markets it’s old brands including Pearl through licensing agreements, I could still drink Pearl beer locally in San Antonio, and it was very good.
63 years ago Walt Disney had a vision. After mastering the animated movie, Disney wanted to bring the ultimate family theme parks to America. He bought a 160-acre site in Anaheim, California and after just a year of construction Disneyland’s grand opening, featuring twenty attractions, was televised live on ABC and watched by 70 million viewers, whilst 28,000 people, most of which managed to gate crash, were in the park.
Today a much larger Disneyland Park gets around 100,000 daily visitors, and I was one of them earlier this week, but was very fortunate to do what 100,000 people are unable to, and got a behind the scenes ticket.
A couple of days in the crazy place that is Las Vegas. I was last here just 6 weeks ago, and other than the temperature literally being half of what it was in August, nothing much else has changed.
I’m up early mostly due to the time difference but also because of the throb of the bass outside my hotel window as the Sunday night revellers party until the time when most normal people are on their commute to work.
Which is what I’m doing today, but yesterday was the laziest of days, which was a rare weekend treat, although it took a fair while to shake a hangover collected after a larger than anticipated Saturday night.
I’m back in Chicago this week with work, although as I’m in Chicago I intend to catch up with a few people and places as well.
I will be downtown except for a work client trip out to Blue Island one afternoon, which is not an island at all, and from the pictures it doesn’t look very blue. Described here as “gritty” and “a must-see for anyone serious about railroading.” It has Addick written all over it.
After a few absorbing days with family in Cartagena, Colombia and after a one-night stopover in Miami, I’m now on a plane to Las Vegas. Probably to be absorbed. This is for a mate’s 50th and the squad assembled, which is bigger than Charlton’s match day one, looks a little ominous.
Three long nights, daytimes of pool parties and the gaps filled up with black jack. Just what this body of mine was built for. Once.
Since we’ve been in Bermuda, we have made good use of quickish flights from Miami to Central America and have been fortunate to visit Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. I took a good look at El Salvador this summer, but decided eventually on Colombia and a city I have longingly admired, Cartagena, which is as the crow flies ‘just around’ the Caribbean coast from Panama City.
Long a safer haven from the geo-political and drug issues of the rest of Colombia, Cartagena is a walled city founded as an important Spanish port almost 500 years ago. The Old Town of Cartagena is a UNESCO world heritage site and by all accounts is a colourful burst of mazy streets with cobbled alleyways and leafy plazas juxtaposed across the bay by a jumble of modern high rises and a busy seaport.
Last summer we spent a week for my birthday in the volcanic Caribbean island of St. Barts, or Saint Barthélemy (St. Barths) as the French call it in the French West Indies. Miami is 3.5 hours away and St. Barts lies 160 miles east of Puerto Rico and immediately south of the French and Dutch shared island of Saint Martin, where we flew into to jump on a noisy seaplane for a 15-minute journey across the water to St Barts. The flight is not for the faint hearted but there is the option of a boat, which takes slightly more than an hour.
The island has a jet-setting reputation of photo shoots, paparazzi and huge homes owned by billionaires that mostly sign idle. The haunt monde reputation began in the 1950’s when David Rockefeller bought two plots of land, including one on Gouveneur Beach. That move compelled the Rothschilds to follow and they arrived with a suitcase of cash and developed an estate in a coconut grove nextdoor to the Rockefellers. Today the Rothschild property is the Hotel Guanahani & Spa.
The island certainly has an air of chic. A mixture of St-Tropez sophistication with Caribbean laissez-fare, but the island doesn’t come across as pretentious. Just over 9,000 people permanently live on St. Barts, although around 200,000 tourists visit the just over 9 sq. miles during it’s summer months.
That used to be one of my regular drinking haunts in Bexleyheath, yes I’m showing my age. Well, with the onset of age and remembering the only horses I ever saw in Catford belonged to the rag and bone man, I have in my adult years taken a keen interest in the ponies, in various formats, and been lucky enough to have been to a couple of polo matches previously.
Of course I don’t really understand it, but I am intuitive enough to realize that it is not easy sat upon a thoroughbred horse galloping at a hundred miles an hour trying to swat a small ball with a stick.
Sarasota Polo Club was founded in 1991, although polo on these Floridian ranches has much deeper roots. The Club sits on 140 acres on the west coast of Florida as part of the famed Lakewood Ranch master community and is one of 300 thriving Polo Clubs in the United States and today we went to witness the last day of the season, which only starts in January.
In Miami for a day and night en route to Colorado for some last minute skiing. The snow omens are good with a fresh powder of snow covering the Rockies. We get to Vail tomorrow lunchtime.
The Easter weather in Bermuda has been chilly (yep I know) but we could feel the warmth as we left Miami Airport this morning, possibly because we had our ski stuff on to save packing it, but the sun has warmed us all, and there were a lot of burnt bodies sat this afternoon by our pool in Miami Beach.
I have literally made this my life’s work. For the 11th year I again scoured hotel showers around the globe testing bathing products, and yes ladies and gentlemen, it’s that time again to present my Annual Chicago Addick Gellies™ which for maximum publicity I coincide with those lesser known 90th Academy Awards taking place in a shiny theatre somewhere in LA.
Those that have suffered this Blog for a long time know that I have a bit of an obsession with hotel shower gel products, or more specifically, the lack of them, and no one is more surprised than me to think I’ve dragged this ridiculousness out for a over a decade.
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:
After a week, ten days, that saw me in Boston, Norfolk (Virginia), Miami and Orlando, I could do with sitting still a little, but no, the island-feavered-other-half wants to get away for a few days over half term, so she has booked us a trip to go and see the rodeo.
We are off to San Antonio in Texas tomorrow, a place I have never been, with the main act being my other-half’s seemingly new fascination with bucking broncos and cowboy boots. Our little ‘un’s going to love it with 2,000 pigs and cattle to play with as well as a petting zoo and pony rides.
Who remembers Up The Creek? I had many a good night there, although didn’t it used to be at the Woolwich Tramshed or was that another comedy club. Anyways my mind is wandering, today I’m off to another Creek, possibly about as dissimilar to the one in Greenwich as you can get, this one is Beaver Creek, a ski resort in Colorado.
I first was in Beaver Creek just over 10 years ago and I reckon this is the x time I stayed at this hotel, which is beautifully set at the foot of Bachelor Gulch, one of the four mountains that makes up the resort.
As expected Ricky Holmes was unveiled as a Sheffield United player today. The fee was undisclosed bu5 reckoned of be no more than £400,000. Richard Murray, remember hump?, said that due to takeover talks the money will not be reinvested in the team, but Holmes wages will, meaning loans and free agents only.
Don’t ask me how during takeover talks players can be sold but not bought. Best to ask Roland how that works. This could get nastier as Duchatelet flogs the family silver one by one.
Flying to Heathrow tonight from JFK. Slightly warmer in the UK, although I saw snow forecast but think it may be oop north. I’m home for just tomorrow, and fly back to Bermuda on Wednesday, so just the 30 hours on English soil and no football. Work and being in Colorado, proper chilly there, from next Saturday the reasons why it is a flying visit.
I orginally began this Blog on Blogger in June 2004. After 1,892 posts and 350,000 visits I switched over to WordPress in August 2010, and today the WordPress stat counter passed the 1,000,000 page views mark, which I admit made me feel very proud.
I’ve written 1,778 posts since moving here in the summer of 2010, clearly less prolific than I was in those early days, but the individual posts get a lot more traffic and that has been increasingly true in recent years.
We’ve been coming to Buckhead for six December’s in a row. Buckhead is an affluent area of Atlanta, which when the lights are on, is an easy direct flight from Bermuda. Probably not the first place that conjours Christmas frippery, but over the years we have found plenty of festive family fun stuff to keep us busy for a couple of days as well as providing an opportunity for some last minute shopping.
About 32 miles north east of Tampa is where I’m heading smack bang in the middle of today’s FA Cup tie against AFC Wimbledon. With work, how inconsiderate.
I have to be there for Monday morning which meant travelling today. Bermuda to Miami to Tampa and the 32 mile drive. I am heading to quite a cool place though. The Saddlebrook Resort is a golf and tennis mecca with 45 tennis courts, two 18-hole golf courses, as well as a 16-acre golf training academy and a 7,000 sq ft spa. Shame I’m there for work, but I might be able to sneak in a bit of recreation, hopefully a tennis lesson at the very least.
Smoke replaced fog drifting across downtown San Francisco when we drove in from the airport last Wednesday. People talked of ash settling on their clothing as they criss-crossed across diagonal roads in between famed cable cars. In the distance towards the mountains a grey hew hung below the sky.
Despite thinking we could still make a day of it, we decided in the end to switch our Friday Napa Valley plans and instead our group travelled the shorter journey across the East Bay from San Francisco to Livermore Valley, One of the oldest wine regions in California, but untouched by commercialism and usually occupied by the local wine connoisseur and not by bus loads of tourists.
A little while back I took my first ever excursion to the south of France, a part of the world I have never previously discovered, but many Brits have and do, and I got to find out why. I was only there for a few days with some friends who had access to a house in the tiny village of Causses-et-Veyran. Wine tasting was the main motive for the trip, but we did also get to travel around the Languedoc area as well, known not only for its young whites, fruity roses and robust reds, but also for it’s beaches, nude ones at that, medieval monuments and beautiful hilly countryside.
I stared at the Arrivals board at Miami airport today to see which carousel my bag was going to end up at and for the life of me I could not remember where I had just flown in from. It was San Francisco and last week was every part of fun and successful, but the time difference was a killer for me this time as well as carrying around a stinking cold.
Vegas was low key, we could feel the numbness and it was quieter than I remember it from other times. Los Angeles was hot, and hectic. Burbank we saw one of our largest clients and home to the ‘happiest place on earth.’ The San Francisco days were long and exhausting mostly stuck in a room, and when we went outside it was chilly.
I have had a tremendous summer of travel, but my head spins when I think about where I have been and some of the absolute sadness and tragedy that many of these places have had to deal with, and how lucky I’ve been to miss some of these awful events.
Back on a plane again later and the relative short flight from here to Philadelphia. I’m at a conference but going to take the opportunity to do some other work things whilst I’m in the City of Brotherly Love. It’s all Greek apparently.
That was the net result of Charlton’s transfer deadline activity. What happened to two players for each position? And the fabled third striker? The biggest concern for me, other than a lack of numbers, is the shift of experience level in the last few weeks has been seismic.
Novak, Crofts, Tex and even dare I say it Watt, are all players that have been around the block, 100+ appearances. Fosu looks good but is raw, and as for Joe Dodoo, he has played half a season at Rangers, scored 3 goals and rarely played an entire 90 minutes.
It’s honestly ground hog day, with Robinson’s timely chest thumping of how good our youngsters are, that they are our DNA blah blah. Turning down offers from Arsenal, like Wenger hasn’t got enough on his plate. Give it a rest Karl.
Not me obviously, I grew up in Catford, but whenever I can I like to get amongst it, you know, have a nose and rub up against some big shoulder pads. Our summer plans got derailed so we were looking at quick breaks, easy-ish to get to from here, and the Google-search-other-half found us a short break in St Barts, or Saint Barthélemy as it is known in French France.
The volcanic Caribbean island of St Barts is what the French call an overseas collective, which puts it in a similar category to Bermuda and it’s relationship with the United Kingdom.
My daughter broke up from school a couple of weeks back and as both the other half and I are working we have to do a lot of juggling and role her around camps for the 10 weeks holiday she gets. Already bored of that, us not her, we’ve decided to take her to Miami for the weekend and then possibly up to the coast to Palm Beach early next week where I am at a conference, or work vacation as my 7-year old calls it!
Taking our 7-year old to Miami of course is a little bit of a ruse and we will eat, shop and people watch well whilst there. But mostly the family all appear knackered, so there will be lots of pool down time.
A week back in a combination of East Sussex, Chislehurst and London Town, all now surrogate homes to me, and now I’m back to reality, if Bermuda is actually reality, with an imminent general election which the media is full off. It’s the week after next and if I can bring myself to, I’ll put a few words together on it soon.
I do a lot of travelling but generally as a rule I don’t like being away for as long as a week on my own, and I was ready to get out of dodge yesterday. As is usual I did a lot of running around, and caught up with a lot of people including old mates on Friday for 50th birthday celebrations. That was a long but funny day.
After a few days in New York working, or as my daughter calls it, on work vacation, I headed south for the rest of the week to Miami where I met up with the family.
New York was good, and I particularly liked staying across the river in Brooklyn, although at certain times of the day the Brooklyn Bridge bore close resemblance to the Dartford Bridge in rush hour. On my last night I met up with old mate New York Addick, where we talked Charlton and the unmitigated disaster of Duchatelet’s ownership.
After many pints we came to the conclusion that Duchatelet hasn’t purposely tried to kill the club, but rather mass incompetence, utterly poor management and sheer stubbornness has resulted in the diabolical situation the club finds itself in. NYA’s most recent analysis of the club’s accounts are well worth a read by the way.
I’ve spent the last few days staying in Brooklyn, at a hotel at the foot of the iconic suspension bridge that connects Brooklyn to Manhattan across the East River. I hadn’t previously spent any real time in Brooklyn, one of New York’s five boroughs, but I did get a little opportunity to explore.
Close up the Brooklyn Bridge is an incredible feat of architecture with it’s immense granite towers and thick steel cables, not to mention its birds-eye views from a span of 1,595 feet. Built in 1883 at a cost of $15m, my hotel room looked out onto it and I found myself just staring at this moving art installation as the sun lit it, the mist hid it, helicopters flew over it, ferries and barges moved underneath it and 120,000 vehicles and 4,000 people criss crossed it on any given day.
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I have been in Colorado since Sunday night at the spotless and snowy Beaver Creek, which is about 13 miles from Vail. 50cm of snow has fallen since we arrived and the four mountains (Beaver Creek, Grouse Peak, Bachelor Gulch and Arrowhead) which make up the resort are awash with fresh powder.
I went on a snowmobile tour yesterday which was exhilarating. Two and a half hours flying along snowy trails hugging mountain ridges and forests with panoramic views of Vail’s back bowls and surrounding ranges. Our guide Perry was straight out of a marijuana dispensary, and was no slouch when it came to leading us through the 20-mile trail.
A quick skip and a jump across the Atlantic to New York for two days for some work meetings with my boss and a few other fellows from across the continent. Short and sweet, and cold (photo), although not as cold in the Big Apple as it was this past weekend.
Bermuda weather has turned a little chilly as well, as it tends to in January for a month or two of what we nominally call winter.
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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After an excellent week in California I flew back today to Miami, where the family will meet me tomorrow for half-term.
So, I have a night on my own in Miami, and after checking out the DJ line ups in South Beach, I have made the executive decision to not leave my bed, and after 5 hotels in 6 days, it is a treat to not have to be running out of the door. My night is set, I have wine and I will watch the Chicago Cubs hopefully secure a World Series spot for the first time since 1945.
Recently I spent a day and a bit up in Long Island touring North Fork’s wine country. The day and time will dictate how long the drive out from Manhattan or JFK airport is, but as the crow flies it is only around 80 miles from the city to North Fork, stretching into a narrow peninsular surrounded by water, with the Long Island Sound to its north and the Peconic Bay to its south, creating an ideal climate for growing grapes.
Not so long ago the region was only known for potato and fruit & vegetable farms but since the late 70’s and 80’s it has become a stellar wine producing region and as we found out a great place to explore some very good wineries, nearly all of whom I had never heard off before.
We were informed that there are around 50 wineries in North Fork, but it seemed more as they lined up next to each other in lush surroundings, with the sea in the air on New York State Route 25, which is not much more than a country single-lane road.
We based ourselves in the Jedediah Hawkins House (below), a painstakingly restored Victorian inn with a well-heeled restaurant and, as you would expect, a well-heeled bar. I don’t think you’d drive out here and not taste wine, but the Jedediah Hawkins was worth the drive on its own.
Each room is individually named and decorated and the grounds deserve exploring (with a glass of course) with it’s gardens, fountains and gazebo. The inn was in Jamesport, a town with a bounty of farms, beaches, vines and charming roadside vegetable stands.
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Two places 40 miles apart but callously grouped together by almost everyone. Known as a metroplex and encompassing over 9,000 sq. miles. Dallas Fort Worth with it’s airport in the middle, and as far as I can make out the only thing named after the North Texas metroplex.
Dallas big and brash and snarled with traffic, Fort Worth quaint and understated with cycles more likely than pick up trucks. Whilst top chefs cook in trendy restaurants in Dallas, Fort Worth still has daily reenactments of cattle drives through it’s historic Stockyards!
Hidden away for a few days in Florida at a very nice hotel in Amelia Island, the southern most point of the chain of barrier islands stretching down the east coast of America. I have been here before, and am happy to be here again, even if this time is work. It says here!
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Our final day in Rio and we ended with a day at the Olympic Stadium watching some athletics. The Olympic Stadium moniker is only being used for the duration of the Games, the real name is the Nilton Santos Stadium, or more fondly known as the Engenhão, and was built for the 2007 Pan American Games and is home to my adopted team Botafogo.
The journey from Barra to Enganhao de Dentro was pretty painful, and eye-opening, and for the first time pretty disorganized. We were met by massive queues when we reached the stadium an hour later than we hoped, but not for the first time our 6-year bebê came in handy with line jumping as preference is given to kids.
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Women’s 10m diving today. The 2007 built, but slightly crumbling, Maria Lenk Aquatics Center has already hosted some of the earlier water polo and is running with the synchronized swimming as well, get your nose pegs ready for that, but diving is the arena’s main pull with just the men and women’s 10m platform left.
28 women, some young enough looking to be in primary school, took part in qualification today each committing 5 dives, each one different and the 18 divers with the highest score progressed to tomorrow morning’s semi-final. The best 12 then take part in the final later tomorrow.
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Trot on. Not my normal sporting activity although I do like the gee gees, but this was slightly different watching the Equestrian team and individual jumping qualification today.
We made our way out to Deodoro, where Brazil’s National Equestrian Centre already existed and an impressive sight it was. The 32,500 seater outdoor arena was built for the 2007 Pan American Games and forms part of the Deodoro cluster of Rio 2016 stadia which includes a mountain bike and BMX track, the modern pentathlon park, where the rugby was held last week as well as the field hockey plus somewhere there was a whitewater rafting and canoe slalom course. I’d like to have seen that.
Nonetheless 4 hours sat in the beating hot sun watching the horses trot around was quite enough. I can’t imagine how hot Rio can get on a warm Summer’s day, but today was toasty and even the beer did not help with my hydration.
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Today was our one day with no tickets for any events, so we decided to cram a visit to the two largest tourist sites in the city into one day, which in hindsight was a bit of an ask.
The first challenge was transport. You can only travel on the BRT and Metro if you have a valid Olympic ticket for that day of competition, we didn’t so we had to cab it around and although not expensive, Rio’s traffic is atrocious. It took an hour to get from our apartment in Barra to Corcovado, where where we met the cog train to ascend 20 minutes up a side of a mountain to see up close the Christ of the Redeemer (Cristo Redentor) statue.
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A cross between basketball and rugby but played on water, I saw a little bit of water polo when I was younger as I had a good mate who played to national standard and I used to go and watch him occasionally. Water polo is a tough sport and it is plenty physical and what goes on under the water is best not seen!
There are 4 periods of 8 minutes with time outs and sin bins used to stop serial eye gouging. The Olympic men’s water polo is still in the group stage and we saw three games today at the Aquatic Centre, where the night before Michael Phelps signed off with his 23rd gold medal.
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I got a lot of grief indoors for getting Beach Volleyball tickets and I have had all the jokes about budgie smugglers and only going for the thongs. Well, let me tell you thongs were very much on show, but the blokes, thankfully, took to the sand pit dressed like they were going for a paddle at Margate .
We lucked out that our session’s first game today at the very impressive temporary Copacabana Beach Arena was Brazil’s men against Spain’s men. World v European champions, and a very, very partisan 10,000 crowd made the day such a memorable experience. The atmosphere was a cross between a hyped up NBA play-off game with added DJ help and dance routines and a high energy Brazilian football match at the Maracana.
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I’m not sure jumping up and down on a trampoline is the most artistic of all gymnastic events but it is a pretty serene sight seeing lithe women fly through the air, throwing all kinds of shapes at high altitude before bouncing back up again like an astronaut in a space station.
We were at the Rio Olympic Arena today for a little gymnastics action and I wouldn’t say I learnt anything apart from falling out of the trampoline badly affects your score. Otherwise the scoring, and at least the docking of points for defections was hard to fathom, but it was enjoyable nevertheless and excitedly we got to see Great Britain pick up a medal.
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We are staying in Barra da Tijuca and purposely picked an apartment close to the new BRT station, Jardim Oceanico. And today for our first day of Olympic action we made our way a couple of minutes around the corner to the station so new that the paint was wet, and the whole journey was easy. 20 minutes most on a brand spanking new bus that floated past traffic in an express lane to get us to Barra’s Parque Olimpico, home to nine different venues including the Tennis Centre, built brand new for the Olympics with an impressive centre court and 15 outside courts, which I would hazard a guess we’re temporary structures.
Barra Olympic Park was previously a Formula One race track and was home to the Brazilian Grand Prix. It was demolished in 2012 to make way for one of the key Rio 2016 centres and will, hopefully, leave the largest sporting legacy to the country once the Olympics has packed it’s rings and moved the circus on.
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We landed in Rio this morning and my first thoughts were as to whether I had brought enough warm and water proof clothes. It has pretty much drizzled the entire day and fog has shrouded the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue that looks down over the XXXI Olympic city and dark skies have hung over us all day.
The airport, vastly improved by all accounts, was impressive. Clean, efficient and organized with hundreds of Rio 2016 volunteers and camera crews everywhere, it gave us a real sense of occasion when we got off the plane this morning, agreeably still in the same time zone as Bermuda. There is a lot to be said for doing an 9-hour overnight flight but not sending your body clock into a spin.
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Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
