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 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 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 moreIf you read my Puerto Rico Travelogue post from last week I wrote that we were told that a Cat 1 Hurricane hitting the island would mean that the fractured power grid would not survive.
Well, over the weekend Hurricane Fiona battered parts of Puerto Rico’s south and central mountain regions with more than 20 inches of rain and Cat 1 hurricane winds of 70-80 mph winds. The southern town of Ponce measured a gust of 103 mph. Landslides broke out in mountainous regions as waterways breached their banks. In the south-west the Guanajibo River crested at over 29ft washing a bridge away.
Please click for moreWe’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.
A few weeks ago we decided to forego an expensive and inevitably frenetic trip home to London and then onto the other half’s sister’s new abode in France. It was a tough decision but work was looking like I wouldn’t be able to be away for a prolonged time and the more we procrastinated, the more bloody expensive the flights got. Thus in the end we made the tough decision not to go home and see our families. We will do a big summer trip instead.
Then we were left with the choice of staying in Bermuda, which would have been fine if a little toasty, 23c on Christmas Day, or making a short trip somewhere else.
Those that read me religiously (thanks Mum) will know we have spent many a weekend in Buckhead over the years, a nice little area north of Atlanta in Georgia. We looked at flights, they were a good price, booked the hotel we always stay at, which is always very Chrismassy (photo), and we flew in last night. And head back to Bermuda on Tuesday.
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After a crazy work end of the first quarter, this week with the family I escaped to Florida and the unusually hip and arty city of Sarasota (photo), situated on the gulf coast just south of Tampa and St Petersburg. There are more museums, galleries and top rated restaurants than anywhere else in Florida and this part of the United States is also renowned for its tennis. World class academies attract the best talent and as such we watched a couple of excellent women’s finals on Sunday at the Wilde Lexus USTA finals in Osprey. 60th world ranked Madison Brengle won the singles.
The family go home today but I am travelling to Atlanta this afternoon and then after a night in Buckhead, 8 of us drive out to Augusta, the home of the iconic Masters. I am fortunate to be an invited guest for Saturday’s round and we stay overnight in our house close to the course no doubt wind swept and thirsty before an early return to Atlanta, which is a good couple of hours from Augusta, before flying home to Bermuda.
Christmas begins in the Chicago Addick family later today when we fly to Atlanta for what has become our little traditional festive jaunt. We base ourselves in Buckhead and will get out to see the awesome Botanical Gardens Christmas Lights and Stone Mountain Park as well as have tea with Santa and his missus. There will also be time for some last minute shopping and this year we have tickets for the Cirque Musica at Phillips Arena.
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Depending how you view this Blog, then you will see snow falling down the screen. That can only mean one thing.
Our tree is up, in fact we have two. We have about 1,500 lights flickering around the house making sure that the local Bermuda electric company make their Q4 earnings and wherever I wonder around the house Christmas tunes can be heard, as well as in the car. The Elf on the shelf appears every night in a different place, sometimes in different outfits. You don’t know what the Elf on the shelf is? Then good for you.
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Feeling a little bit Christmas partied out this morning. Some people may call it a hangover.
Partying Work does come to an end tomorrow afternoon as the family head to Atlanta for a few days to have what has become traditional our pre-Christmas weekend, although we are later than in recent years.
Atlanta is a strange place. No boundaries, no oceans, no mountains so it just grows and grows, meaning sadly it lacks a real heart, but we stay in Buckhead which is a little pocket of refined and cultured (a little like me last night) and stay at the fantastic St Regis. So fantastic that Santa Claus comes to visit you, for a small fee of course.
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Back from Atlanta after another fun and tireless Christmas weekend in the ‘Big Peach’ with the family. We did everything we set out to do despite the weather being unusually uncooperative, the city witnessing overnight temperatures touching freezing and bang in the middle of nine consecutive days of rain.
We ended last night with a trip to the beautiful Botanical Gardens, just over a year to the night when me and the other half made our long relationship a bit more proper by me putting a ring on it.
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We are taking what has become our annual weekend trip to Atlanta later today.
Tea with Santa, the Atlanta Christmas parade, a puppet show, the Christmas lights at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, the Aquarium and some Christmas shopping if we can fit it in are all on the agenda.
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A weekend in Atlanta is in store for me, the other half and little ‘un as we travel tomorrow afternoon from Bermuda to the furthest west a direct flight will take us. Flight time to Atlanta from here is 3 hrs, 35 mins.
For such a remote island, daily you can fly from Bermuda to New York, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia and Toronto in North America and these are added to in the summer months with a seasonal service to Baltimore, Halifax, Charlotte and Washington DC. Ten different airlines fly in and out of Bermuda including British Airways and the basket case that is becoming American Airlines.
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Home after a long weekend in Georgia. The trip was planned to meet up with friends, who are attending a wedding this Saturday. It was great to see them again. We met them whilst he was on a work secondment in Chicago 5 years ago and we have stayed close and have both added a child to the mix.
We did have one night on our own though, so we chose to stay in the very agreeable Buckhead at the St Regis on Friday and were taken aback by how majestic the hotel was. After a Saturday morning sat by the adorable swimming pool which resembled a roman bath, and followed by an afternoon of shopping at Lenox Square, we drove the 40 miles north to Lake Lanier (photo), a vast 38,000 acre lake that is Atlanta’s main source of water.
We arrived at Lake Lanier Islands in the dark so failed to see it’s beauty but sadly what we did get to see was our cockroach infested lake house villa. Our friends, who were on route from the airport had booked it and the plan was that we’d crash with them.
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I’m back off island tomorrow afternoon as the family and I head for Atlanta. Until late Saturday afternoon we will stay in Buckhead, the Beverly Hills of the East as it is known by people that have probably never been to Beverly Hills, although to be fair Buckhead has a lot more going for it than downtown Atlanta.
Saturday evening we are driving about 40 miles north to a place called Lake Sidney Lanier to meet some very good friends from the UK who are staying at the big lodge-type resort there for a week in readiness for a wedding the following weekend. We are going to crash with them until we leave on Tuesday and no doubt drink and eat like bandits.
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Sarasota, Florida
