Well it finally happened. Ariel and I are back to plane travel for the first time since our pre-pandemic trip to Turks and Caicos in 2019. And here we are, back in Bermuda, a place we did not really expect to come back to so soon, if ever!

The past two years have been pretty tough for us, as evidenced by the lack of blog posts. Thankfully we weathered the pandemic quite well physically and financially, but for the first time in my life, I went through two entire calendar years without ever getting on a plane. Which, ok, there are obviously bigger problems than that, and many people lost so so so much over the past two years, in a way that the world really hasn’t come to terms with it.

We were extraordinarily lucky to have gotten through this the way we did.

But still…

This was an itch we’ve been looking to scratch for a long time. We DID do some pandemic travel over the past two years, but it was all by car. We went to the Catskills a couple of times and the Outer Banks on our first really real adventure trips with Jacob. We did a lot of hiking in the woods in New York (and locally as well), and got some taste of a proper beach getaway in North Carolina. We went on pretty much every possible hike in Middlesex County, NJ. I had to travel (by car) for business to southwest Virginia, and took a short detour through Shenandoah National Park. Ariel and I even managed to to spend a couple of nights on our own, once in Manhattan and once at Asbury Park, NJ (which we never really did pre-pandemic).

We did have some fun adventures over the past two years that I hope to recap eventually.

But still…

The Outer Banks has really nice beaches, and the drive there was more interesting than I expected (Cape May Car Ferry and Chesapeake Bay Bridge for the win). We even did a nighttime star viewing experience at Cape Hatteras and got to see the Milky Way. But the East Coast is pretty much the East Coast. And the Catskills are basically New Jersey North. We went on some really nice hikes, but the scenery in the middle of one Mid-Atlantic forest vs another can only vary so much. And the Jersey Shore is… not a whole lot different than the North Carolina shoreline!

We needed a change of scenery in the absolute worst way, and now we finally got it. It’s pretty funny that we followed up a trip to the Outer Banks with a trip to Bermuda, since they have so much in common and are actually the next land masses from each other when crossing the Atlantic. We also learned while being here that there was really quite a bit of shared history between the two areas.

We ended up returning to Bermuda rather than going somewhere new for a few reasons. First of all, it’s only a 90 minute flight and you can do US customs in Bermuda, so it’s very convenient. The last time Jacob was on a plane was our 2019 trip to Canada so we weren’t sure what to expect from him on a plane and in an airport. He was great!

The other thing about Bermuda was that we booked this trip right at the time of the Omicron outbreak. Last year we had set ourselves an end point of January 31st for our virus living. Ariel and I were both vaccinated and boosted, and treatments had improved dramatically. At first we wanted to wait for Jacob to be vaccinated, but it just didn’t look like it was going to happen, and doing this for an entire additional year (until he was 5) just wasn’t in the cards. Bermuda has been extremely Covid safe, with only a few short-lived waves. They’re extremely careful about the virus too, everyone is in masks, and sanitizing. We just felt like a short flight, plus practically no virus here would be the safest option for international travel. So here we are again!

Not a huge amount to write about Bermuda that I didn’t last time we were here. It’s still incredibly beautiful, incredibly easy to get to, and incredibly expensive. However, we have been able to do a few things that we missed out on the first time around that will be its own blog post.

But for now, I’m just excited to be writing this outside the US, with the sound of waves crashing into the beach, and seeing palm trees waving in the wind. It’s just what the doctor ordered…

…and it’s also a good dry run for our next big adventure in May, when we will take to the skies again to finally get me to my 50th state and cross a huge item off my dad’s bucket list. More on that later…