Bermuda

If anyone's been wondering where I've been, I've been off doing the 3Rs--rest, relaxation, and research--in the Bermuda Triangle.  If you look really closely, you can see my cruise ship docked at the very tip of the J in this picture of Bermuda from space.  There's a lovely view of the airport at the upper right.  Anyway, after a week on the high seas, I'm home and brought back enough photos, books, condiments, memories and rum to fill at least a couple of stories. Indeed, I wrote parts of one about a shipwrecked young man and the pirate who seizes him as part of his spoils. Gotta love pirates, right?  Bermuda has a rollicking history of pirates and rogues, some of whom did very well for themselves.

I toured some really old houses, paying attention to construction and materials, and got hold of some books with old maps of the reefs and settlements, and also shipwrecks.  Good stuff. I'd learned years ago that William Shakespeare based The Tempest on the adventures of shipwrecked sailors in Bermuda, but it was fun to learn some of the stories behind the story.  Bermuda was called the Isle of Devils and caused the Spanish so much dread they failed to settle the islands for nearly a hundred years while they had the chance.  Eventually some English colonists on the way to Virginia shipwrecked on the island and discovered it was actually not such a bad place.  They moved on to Virginia (they were under contract, after all), but other English colonists came to settle Bermuda and that's why today people like me can go there and carry on meaningful conversations with the natives. Said natives are very friendly for people who live where the average price of a two bedroom, one bath house is $1.4 million.

The island is spectacularly beautiful, temperate, friendly and expensive.  I would love to return someday, rent a house for a year, and simply write.  Other writers have done it, so it could happen.  A girl can dream.