Jan 22
🔝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:
Chicago Addick 