Bermuda is an amazing travel destination with a lot to offer on a relativity small island. Whether as a couple’s romantic getaway, family vacation, or trip with friends (we’ve done all of the above over the years), Bermuda can’t be beat. The island is safe and convenient to get to and get around.

For our most recent week-long trip to Bermuda, we flew out of Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. The flight time was approximately two hours with only about 90 minutes of time in the air. From the New York metro area, the flight is shorter than trip to Florida. Bermuda is only about 700 miles away from New York City.

Our most recent flights since having kids have been on super budget airlines like Spirit and Frontier which “nickel and dime” you for everything but that’s par for the territory for the cheap flights. This time we flew United which was the first time taking the kids on a major carrier. It turns out that now United operates more like the budget airlines and we still had to pay to chose our seats, luggage, and were restricted to no carry-ons since we booked “basic economy”. We had two passes for the United Lounge but were denied access since the kids needed passes, as well. But EWR’s Terminal C has been updated and is as nice as some airport lounges anyway, so it was no big loss.

Upon landing in Bermuda (about 20 minutes early) we had to wait on the tarmac for a “gate” to become available. Bermuda’s airport requires you to deplane via stairs and walk outside to the terminal. However, a brand new terminal is currently under construction and should be opened in about a year. Once inside the airport the customs line was very long and luckily an airport employee let us skip over to the “business class” line since we have small childen. Even this line took about 25 minutes.

We had scheduled for a taxi pickup in advance with the host of our rental. The driver was the host’s father and we ended up using him for most of our taxi rides throughout the week. He (as were most people in Bermuda) was very friendly and hospitable. The cost to get from the airport to our rental in Southampton was about $50 (we gave a $10 tip on top of that).

After arriving at our rental and unpacking, our host drove us to the nearby Heron Bay Marketplace for groceries. Our children have various food allergies so staying somewhere where we could cook was important for this trip as we did not know how allergy friendly restaurants in Bermuda would be. We typically do research on allergyeats.com in advance of trips but AllergyEats only covers the U.S. so we used the Allergy Travels Facebook group for this trip. There were not too many reviews for restaurants in Bermuda, but it was still helpful. We also packed a cooler in a suitcase that contained vaious items we were unsure if we’d be about to purchase in Bermuda, such as gluten and egg-free frozen waffles and gluten and egg-free snacks for the kids.

It turned out that the supermarkets in Bermuda have a lot of options (many of the same ones we are accustomed to in the United States). In fact, many of the items in the supermarket were ShopRite brand (which if you’ve from the New York/New Jersey area you’ll be very used to). We ended up bringing a lot more groceries to Bermuda than we needed to and now know for next time we can pack a lot less. Costs in the supermarket were not drastically more expensive than prices back home. For example, frozen Bubba Burgers would be about $12 for a package in the U.S. and were about $18 in Bermuda. A gallon of milk was about $2 more than back home. Interestingly, a dozen eggs were only $1.89 in Bermuda. The item with the highest percentage increase in cost was alcohol, so we were glad we purchased alcohol duty free back at EWR.

After getting back to the rental with our groceries and having dinner we took the boys for a sunset swim since they were begging to go in the pool. We couldn’t have been happier with the amazing view and accommodations we had selected.

Next up is Bermuda – Day 2.