Oct 12
Everyone remembers their first live concert. Mine was Soft Cell at the Hammersmith Palais in 1983. I vividly rememeber it to this day. Last night I took my daughter and a friend to see Billie Eilish in Miami. It was her first ever experience of a proper large gig.
I have been to hundreds of live shows, but you never forget your first. It is a right of passage.
Please click for moreWhat did you do yesterday?
Watch Lee Carsley’s brilliant England U21’s retain the Euro Championship? Sing-a-long to the Glastonbury coverage? Watch the empty seats under dark sky’s during the ridiculous weather break of the Chelsea match? Or something completely different..
Please click for moreWe are coming close to the finish line, we are at 18 of my 20 Places to laud my 20 Years of writing this Blog.
I chose them in no particular order, but each one stands on its own as a place I hold dear. At no. 18 is Miami.
Please click for moreI have a different job these days, with differing pressures but still most of the hard yards come in the first six months of the year and that has remained the case so this weekend represents the ‘end of the season’ for most of us in our business.
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 moreAfter a boys weekend in Miami Beach I am driving back to Sarasota this morning, 229 miles in total from coast to coast of South Florida.
The trip had been long planned and although I was questioning myself on Friday afternoon when I did the reverse of this drive, it was fun and typically we ate very well.
Please click for moreTo wrap up what was an epic week of travelling, I am now in Miami with the family and friends celebrating a 50th birthday.
Flying back from Las Vegas Sunday night was tough, this body of mine is hurting after 10 days of travelling in California and then onto Las Vegas for the Formula 1 on Thursday. It was a week of epic proportions but one for the memory bank.
Please click for moreSad day yesterday what with the passing suddenly of Trevor Francis followed by the awful news that Chris Bart-Williams had also died aged just 49.
Chris lived and worked in Florida and was head of coaching for Dade County FC in Miami. After finishing up from professional football in Malta Chris moved to Connecticut to work in the women’s game. He was then assistant coach at Quinnipiac University.
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 moreI will be in Miami this weekend driving across state today for what will be my sixth time in the Magic City this year.
Miami is known as the Magic City not because of any black arts, although I am sure they exist, but because the once barren land pulled a whole new city out of a hat literally overnight about 60 years ago.
Please click for moreTime to escape the high heat and the nudging 100% humidity of Bermuda, so we are flying to Florida tomorrow for, er more of the same. Actually as an expert in sweating during summers, I think Florida’s heat is a lot more bearable, probably due to modern day air-conditioning. Our Bermuda home built of large slabs of limestone is more than 200 years old, and the air-conditioning units possibly not much younger!
Please click for moreWe are on our way to Miami this morning, an almost 3-hour flight from Bermuda, and once again just like last time our daughter is on her way separately with the Bermuda swim team to Barbados.
This time it is CCCAN (Central American and Caribbean Amateur Swimming Confederation) Championships. The meet could realistically have been anywhere in Central America or the Caribbean, and selfishly it is a shame that we are back in Barbados again, although at least it will be familiar surroundings.
Please click for moreWe are in Miami today just me and the free-as-a-bird-other-half. There are plans and motives and proposals of high-end shopping, high-jinks drinking, high-life eating and high-fidelity dancing, but let’s be honest we will probably be wrapped up in bed by 8.
The reason we are on our own is because our 12-year daughter is on her way to Barbados with the Bermuda swim team, after qualifying for CARIFTA, which is the Caribbean youth games (U18).
I fly to Florida tomorrow for a few days mostly to check in on the house in Sarasota. See what the latest round of excuses are from the variety of contractors and artisans. No doubt our furniture is being sourced from Moscow.
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ Restaurants are the next subject of my 2021 Top Fives. My dry January and eating healthier hasn’t quite gone to plan. Very off plan in fact, and may explain my love of the nice things in life.
Eating out has been a very different experience since the pandemic and restaurants have suffered more than most. Many need support, and I was lucky to enjoy some great meals out attempting in some small way to do that last year. Here are my 2021 Top Five Favourite Restaurants 🥩
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 moreI’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 more🔝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.
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:
It’s Bermuda Cup Match long weekend, a cricket game that shuts the island down and we don’t have to go to work. Yay. So the choice is going to the game, which I have done many times, camp on the side of the road like the locals do, sit indoors under the a/c, or make use of the bank holiday and get off the island. We’ve done the latter.
We haven’t really left the humid weather behind because we are in Florida, but despite similar heat levels, you never seem too far from proper air conditioning here, so the sweaty uncomfortableness doesn’t seem quite as brutal.
The trip starts on the gulf coast to check in on the long running saga of a house renovation we are doing in Sarasota. I’ll leave that there because the slight mention of it gets me into a embittered temper and a grump.
*Counts to 5*
A quick weekend in Miami to meet the exhausted-other-half and our little Edwina the Eagle daughter after their week skiing in Colorado. Whilst I made the short hop across from Bermuda this morning, they had to suffer a midnight flight and a red-eye from Denver.
A pretty quiet weekend should ensue and a welcome break from work, which is currently relentless and unsympathetic to doing much else including sleeping through the bloody night.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
Like a lot of others I am sat tonight glued to CNN and the Weather Channel like it’s a drug. One of the reasons is work related. I live and breathe risk during the week, natural, human or otherwise, so what is happening in Florida and happened to those poor Caribbean islands and Texas last week has massive ramifications for us at work.
For reason’s I haven’t fathomed I seem to be rather attracted to hurricanes. I wouldn’t mind but I can’t even fly a kite. Yet in the last couple of weeks I have been in St Barts, Saint Martin, Sarasota, Tampa and Miami and I live on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that has annoyingly been a recent magnet to big storms, around 7 or 8 hurricanes in the past 5 years, once we even had two different hurricanes over consecutive weekends!
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.
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.
We long had tickets for Adele’s first night in Miami and had worked the half-term break, which included our daughter’s 7th birthday today, around the Tottenham lasses 96th night of her tour (15 to go) as she reminded the 20,000 crowd last night at the Miami Heat’s American Airlines Arena.
Our night started rather chaotically as we were met with a huge and disgruntled crowd outside the arena. It wasn’t like this place wasn’t used to crowds, but apparently the ticket bar code readers were failing the surprisingly small group of staff holding up entry to the event. News of the late arrival of Hillary Clinton I am sure threw security and those still outside added angst.
When Adele came on an hour late, there were still many empty seats in the long sold out arena. Mine was empty too as I was queuing at the bar as I listened to ‘Hello’ from the concourse.
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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.
A lot of people have asked me if Bermuda was impacted by Hurricane Matthew. It wasn’t, but the lesser scrutinized Tropical Storm Nicole will come over the island on Thursday and will give us plenty of rain and winds of 50mph.
Matthew impacted me in that it meant a mate and I’s weekend in Miami had to be shelved as we couldn’t get there from Dallas in time to make it worthwhile. That’s more the annoying because Matthew’s track moved away from Miami and all they really got was a downpour.
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We are using Miami as a staging point for our onward journey to Rio, where we fly to late on Tuesday night for the Olympics. I am a big Miami fan and know the city and it’s assorted environs pretty well. Today however we saw Miami from a different vantage point. From the water.
We booked a morning boat tour with Ocean Force Adventures, and a 30 ft rigid inflatable boat, or RIB, with our own captain, who doubled as a very knowledgable guide. He took us on a two and half hour tour of Miami’s waters getting up close to the celebrity mansions of Star Island, Palm Island and Fisher Island, the enormous Port of Miami and busy cruise ship terminal (1 in every 7 passenger cruise ships in the world departs from here), Key Biscayne, Biscayne National Park, Cape Florida Lighthouse, the historic Miami River and some mouthwatering views of the downtown Miami, Brickell and South Beach skylines.
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After a couple of days in Miami we have moved our holiday onto the relatively undeveloped Belize jungle, which brings something of interest to no one but myself and my mobile phone provider, but means I will follow Charlton’s game in Nottingham on Tuesday night from another country, the 4th different one for each of the 4 games played so far…. The Valley SE7, Bermuda, Florida USA and Belize.
Anyway Miami as always was fun packed, an effervescent oasis marooned amongst the rest of Florida that Dave rediscovered recently.
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Excellent point at one of the promotion favourites today. Don’t know much about the game as we were having a late breakfast in Miami but I was constantly drawn to what seemed an exciting game on Twitter and it looked as if we deserved our point with a wholehearted defensive performance punctuated by some good play on the break.
Cristian Ceballos started on the left of midfield, to some surprise, and was responsible for possibly the worst corner in Charlton’s history, which has to be seen to be believed. I have hopes for the young Spaniard though, but him out left did allow Cousins to move inside alongside Kashi.
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We leave for our summer holidays tomorrow beginning in one of our favourite weekend spots of Miami, before flying two hours to Belize on Monday morning for a week. We then return to Florida and will head to Orlando for our second week, but plan also to spend a bit of time out on the Gulf Coast while we are in the sunshine state.
Living in Bermuda allows pretty quick access to Central America via Miami and we have already had some great holidays in Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama whilst living here. Belize has been on my list since when I was dying to drive down from Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula to see it’s incredible barrier reef, but scorching hot weather and a young baby made us the see the error of our ways.
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On my way to Miami Beach this morning with the family for the week.
You might find it hard to believe but I am actually working, proper working. It is our group’s annual Symposium which is my favourite work week of the year, but it entails back to back meetings and presentations from early morning to late at night starting this afternoon.
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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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Sat in the top tier open to the blazing sun, it was a very hot and sweaty afternoon at Miami’s Sun Life Stadium yesterday (photo taken 30 mins before kick off) as the Packers rallied late to win 27-24 after Aaron Rodgers threw a 4-yard touchdown pass to Andrew Quarless with three seconds left.
With many empty seats around the 80,000 capacity stadium (the official attendance was given as 70,875) there appeared to be as many Green Bay fans as there were home ones sat on the bright orange seats, and they made themselves heard after Rodgers moved the Packers down the field to eventually pass to Nelson for a 9-yard touchdown after less than 5 minutes.
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Breakfast in Bermuda, New York for lunch, Chicago for dinner, Kansas City tomorrow for lunch. That is the itinerary and then stay a few days in the home of the barbeque, before Dallas and Miami next Friday night.
A week of work travel mostly at a conference in Kansas City, which is arguably the hardest place to get to in the world from Bermuda. Six airports, hopefully a bucket load of barbecue ribs and I have even got an invite to the speedway.
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Thursday and Friday in Bermuda are national holidays, officially known as Emancipation Day and Somers Day, but more widely known as Cup Match, when the two end’s of the island take each other on at cricket.
It’s a fun time to be in Bermuda, but I’ve ticked that box a few times and it is hard to give up an opportunity to go away for a long weekend. Thus, we find ourselves at the airport on our way to Miami, a familiar retreat for us.
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I hadn’t gotten around to posting my final 2013 Top 5’s, so I am going to bombard you with the final ones in the next few minutes starting with the best places I got to see last year.
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After two weeks away from home today we are back on the ‘rock.’ I can’t remember the last time I had two consecutive weeks away from home, and although I was working – 6am starts in Colorado, and 7am in Miami and every night was a late night – it was enjoyable, particularly as I had my family with me.
I’m not going to pull the wall over anyone’s eyes, I am very lucky. Working from 6-10am and then again in the evening but in-between the Colorado mountains calling you to play outside or in a windowless conference room in a Miami hotel from 7am to 6pm with very demanding clients, whilst all the while Miami South Beach’s temptations lie await for later, is nice life, as long as one is prepared to think about little else but work save for the odd bad dream about football!
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In a warm Miami this morning after a journey back from a very snowy Colorado yesterday evening.
In the last three days we were in Beaver Creek 36 inches of snow fell, the most at this time of many years. This had caused earlier airport issues with a bountiful of cancellations and the tiny Eagle airport near Vail was stretched to breaking point yesterday, as was my patience.
Our flight had a weight problem, so they had to throw a few fatties off and some luggage which caused a lot of consternation and an hour delay all the while after I had to push a wheelchair, carry 7 bags, and herd a 4-year old.
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When we were recently in Miami, we took a drive out to the Everglades Safari Park to have a closer look at Florida’s rare eco-system with the hope that we would also see alligators in their natural environment.
The only way to do that was by airboat, which is a flat-bottomed boat with an engine and an aircraft propeller that flies across the surface of the water.
We chose a private tour because we didn’t want to have to queue as the rides are first come first served and it is a popular place for coach parties. The private tour was a little more expensive but we had more time out on the water and had our own personal airboat and guide.
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There are many higher places to travel to than Banff, but believe me it feels very close to heaven here. The mountains that surround Banff on all sides are breathtaking with dark evergreen trees layering them like a blanket. It is a beautiful little place, one of the most picturesque I have seen in North America.
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Back from a great but knackering week in Florida with work. I spent the last night of the trip with a client that owns the imposing Westin Diplomat in Hollywood north of Miami. They were very accomodating and it was a restful way to end the trip, which started in similar fashion last Sunday with a few beers with New York Addick on Ocean Drive in South Beach.
A weekend of not doing an awful lot is on the radar, although the weather here doesn’t appear to encourage doing much outside. Hopefully I can catch some of the FA Cup games on the telly, although the one I’d like to see doesn’t appear to be on.
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On my way to Miami for my companies annual Symposium where mostly we’ll be holed up in a South Beach hotel. The event kicks off tonight and ends on Thursday.
The weather will pay havoc with others getting down to Florida as America’s north-east has been stunned by a ‘snow bomb’ including my old mate New York Addick, who was back on his old stomping ground and has hopefully made it down to Florida where he is working next week. I hope to meet him later for a drink.
After a manic, and an often wearing March at work we leave Bermuda tomorrow for a week away spending the first weekend in Coral Gables, near Miami and then next week in Colorado followed by the majority of the next weekend making our way back from the mountains to Bermuda, not something the airlines allow us to do simply.
As I posted last weekend we have tickets for the Sony Ericsson Open tennis men’s final on Sunday afternoon. In today’s semi’s Rafa Nadal plays Andy Murray and number one seed Novak Djokovic is paired with the 21st seed Argentinian Juan Monaco.
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On Mother’s Day we went to the Miami Children’s Museum which is located on a landfill island called Watson Island on Biscayne Bay, about 15 minutes from where we were staying in Coral Gables. As Americans celebrate Mother’s Day in May and we were there early, the museum was empty.
It is almost 10 years old but the contemporarily designed museum had a very new feel to it and it was a load of fun. Inside there were 14 different galleries with hundreds of interactive exhibits and the museum was a real source of learning and stimulation.
Our 17-month old had her fingers and eyes everywhere as we made our way around the two-storey building. There was a lot of product placement and sponsorship, of course we were in America but the Publix supermarket, Bank of America and the Carnival cruise liner didn’t take away from the fun. My favourites (I’m allowed favourites aren’t I?) were the Art Museum and the Music Studio, where you could lay down your own track.
If you’re ever in this part of Florida with kids, I fully recommend a visit. It was $12 per person including kids over 1.
TPC Louisiana
