Before you unpack, before you see your room, before you can begin to sort out your kaleidoscopic straight-from-the-airport impressions
of water everywhere and lush flowers and semitropical semiformality, Hazel Lowe sits you down at her dining room table. She brings you a cool drink. She unfolds a map. And then she plans your visit to Bermuda.
The wise traveler listens carefully and follows each recommendation. Hazel has coddled guests at Salt Kettle House since the 1970s. She knows everyone and everything worth knowing on Bermuda. And she makes it her mission to ensure that her guests have a wonderful time.
Not that it’s hard to have a wonderful time on this Atlantic Ocean outpost. Bermuda, some 600 miles east
of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, encompasses a cluster of more than 300 coral islands and islets, with most of
the substantial ones linked by bridges. Together they add up to less than 20 square miles. Well-heeled travelers
have long congregated here. Golfers enjoy water vistas from practically every hole of every course. Sunbathers bask on the famous pink-sand beaches (well, pinkish beige at least) along the southern shore.
Lodging options include resorts, hotels, and cottage colonies (cottages built around a main house). They tend to be luxurious and pricey. Salt Kettle House belongs to
a more intimate category: the guesthouse, equivalent to an American bed-and-breakfast. Salt Kettle House sits on a tiny peninsula in the middle of Bermuda, a six-minute ferry ride across the harbour (this is a British territory with British spellings) from the capital, Hamilton.
Despite a gradual drift toward informality, dressing
for dinner remains the island norm—especially at such establishments as the chic Barracuda Grill just off the Hamilton waterfront. Hazel, a native of England with a penchant for dry understatement, admits that after the restaurant’s 2002 opening, it took her a while to visit. “I finally tried it,” she says, “and I was agreeably surprised. Agreeably surprised.”
You might want to order the fish chowder, and the grilled rockfish and butter-poached lobster. Definitely agreeable. (Also expensive, as is everything in Bermuda, which must import most of what it consumes.) Downstairs rests the more relaxed Hog Penny Pub, constructed from actual pubs dismantled and shipped from England. It also supplies excellent food and live music—a relative rarity, but you don’t come to Bermuda for the nightlife.
