A Bermudian, a Brit, a Canadian and two Americans walked into a Vermont pub……

Menu from Firestones in Quechee, Vermont

Yes, a Bermudian, a Canadian, a Brit, and two Americans walked into a pub (Firestones) in Quechee, Vermont and we ordered three Dark n Stormys, a gingerale (definitely not for the Bermudian) and a Vermont Ale (for the Brit).

No, this is not a joke. Well what transpired was a comedy of errors, but it was never meant to be. Nope, this was supposed to be my New Year’s Eve.

I had planned ahead. I never do that, but this time I had four other people depending on me. Why? Because I decided to drag two friends who live in Bermuda (the Canadian and the Brit) and my college roommate and her boyfriend to a house in Quechee, VT.

Some skiing, New England quaintness and a place where I wouldn’t know anyone was just what the doctored ordered. I had rock fever.

Unfortunately this ailment is nothing that a doctor can cure. Nope. Instead, it is what Bermudians feel after spending too much time on our 21 square-mile island. That and my travel column every Wednesday in The Royal Gazette, of course!

After Delta delayed our escape by five hours we arrived in Boston by 7 p.m. and began our trek to Vermont. It’s only two hours so it wasn’t too bad.

The Americans had already made it to Quechee and we found them ensconced in beer and nibbles at the Firestones’ Pub waiting for us. It was busy, but our waitress was so amazing it made the time fly.

She even carded me! I felt young again. Heck maybe I’m a questionable 21-year-old at 31? Works for me. This was going to be a good vacation.

Even better, we had a little bit of Bermuda waiting for us on the menu. Yes I wanted to escape, but I always love seeing my home country featured somewhere. Well especially because we’re so small!

There it was listed on the Firestones’ menu: a Dark ‘n’ Stormy. Arguably Bermuda’s National drink,  the Dark ‘n’ Stormy consists of our Black Seal Rum (a dark, rich

Quchee's Waterfall/Glass Blowing Company

and smooth alcohol) mixed with Barritt’s Ginger Beer. Any other ginger beer just simply will not do.

I was sure Firestones did not have Barritt’s, but I thought I would give Firestones’ the benefit of the doubt (the friendly waitress who carded me, helped) and we decided to book our New Year’s Eve dinner here.

There were not many other choices. I mean, I love Quechee. It’s quintessential New England. But as far as eating on New Year’s Eve we were at a loss.

Sure we could have chosen Simon Pearce and spent $80 on a four course meal, but that would not have included drinks, tax or service. We didn’t have that kind of money.

The 31st came. We put the skis down, showered and even donned some make-up for the occasion. At 8p.m. we were ready for a good night.

Too bad our Firestones’ waitress wasn’t. Our friendly, first night waitress had been replaced with another.

“What do you want to order?”

Well, hello to you too. Yes, we would love to have a great New Year’s Eve, thank you for asking, I belittled the waitress in my head. I bit my tongue and we gave her the drinks order.

Three Dark ‘n’ Stormys, a gingerale and a Vermont ale.

“Ok, now do you know what food you want to order?”

“uhh, I mean, uh…no!”

She was starting to get downright pushy. I was getting tired of it. She left.

Five minutes later, she returned.

“Ok fine we’ll order.”

That meant our starters. We were still holding out on her. I mean we planned to be there for midnight. We were not going to get so lucky. As soon as she placed the order in the kitchen she was back.

“Now do you want to order your mains?” Not much of a question really. We did. Three Kobe steaks at various levels of cooking, a sea bass and chicken parmesan.

Easy, right? Nope.

The starters came, they entered our stomachs and the cutlery was taken away….never to return. Well not until we’d already had the steaks and the chicken.

Robyn, you forgot the sea bass?! Nope, nope I didn’t. Actually the waitress did.

I remained gracious: “Dig in guys. Please don’t wait for me.”

Drive-by photo of Firestones

“Ugh, mine’s cold. Mine’s not cooked enough,” echoed around the table.

We called over the waitress. Our conversations turned from borderline impolite to downright rude.

Us: “Sorry, but our steaks are all cold and we still don’t have the sea bass.”

Waitress: “What do you want me to do about it?”

I get it’s New Year’s Eve. I get that no one wants to work, but well, we would have spent a decent chunk of change. She would have done all right if she had managed an iota of pleasantness.

“Are you sorry they’re cold?” I asked her.

“Yes, I’m sorry. So what would you like me to do?”

Fly to the moon, solve world poverty, find the cure for cancer, I don’t know, maybe cook new steaks?!

The men at our table decided to confront the manager; I had already tried to no avail.

Manager: “Oh, yeah well I only heard about this five minutes before. I’m supposed to have dinner with my wife of 27-years. Um….let’s see how this turns out.”

It turned out that after fixing the steaks, my sea bass came out colder than before, the chicken parmesan had congealed cheese and we were done.

And so was her tip and half of the bill! We bid Firestone’s farewell.

A quick trip to the gas station delivered a few beers and some wine into our party and as we arrived home fireworks erupted on the ski hill!

I think we had the last laugh!

A taste of Bermuda in Chicago

 

Bermudian Doug Jones looking over Chicago

 

From wandering past a large eye-ball statue to imbibing a Bermuda-based drink, Bermudian resident Sam Strangeways and her boyfriend, Doug Jones, explored the highs (from the Willis Tower) to the lows (deep-dish style) of Chicago. Here Sam shares Chicago in the latest installment of Bermuda’s Postcards:

Ever noticed how Bermuda – tiny dot that it is in the middle of the sea – manages to leave little reminders of itself all over the world?

You can be in the unlikeliest of places on a desperately needed get-away-from-it-all vacation and still spot an obscure vestige of island life.

Hence why I shouldn’t have been at all surprised to see, in the sophisticated heart of Chicago, that Bermuda had worked its way onto a snazzy (and slightly pretentious) cocktail list.

Actually, it was the Drawing Room’s cocktail waitress who was, perhaps, a tad pretentious, albeit initially very friendly.

 

Bermuda is on the drinks' menu!

 

We’d found the North Rush Street basement bar and restaurant by chance after watching a hilarious musical version of The Breakfast Club on our second night of a long weekend stay in the Windy City.

After heading out of the theatre into the unknown and largely deserted neighbourhood of Lakeview, we hopped in a cab and hightailed it back to the centre of town.

Nothing could have been less pretentious – or more fun – than pH Productions’ adaptation of the classic 1980s John Hughes’ film about five wayward high school students.

So we were in pretty high spirits when we stumbled, starving, down the steps of the Drawing Room – and met (allegedly) the world’s most knowledgeable cocktail waitress.

She presented us with a vast, dazzling grin and a gigantic menu of gorgeous-sounding cocktails before telling us about the venue’s Master Mixologist (I had to suppress a giggle there).

“I expect you’ll have a lot of questions about the drinks and I’ll be more than happy to get the answers for you,” she said, a little sternly, before heading back in the direction of the bar.

I turned to my boyfriend. “I have no questions,” I whispered.

“Neither do I,” he replied. “Except: how do I get a drink and some food in this place?”

Then his face suddenly lit up – Bermuda, his beloved homeland, had come to the rescue.

Nestled in the list of alcoholic delights was a beverage named a Port Royal Fizz, with ingredients including Gossling’s (sic) Black Seal rum and ginger beer.

“It’s basically a trumped-up Dark’n’Stormy, bye!” he snorted. “How cool is that?”

We were ready with a barrage of questions by the time the waitress returned – was it named after the golf course? Had the Master Mixologist been inspired on a trip to the island? – but, I’m sorry to report, we got no answers.

Our waitress – the same woman from five minutes before – looked vaguely irritated by the queries and said she had no information on the origin of the drink.

“Have you decided what food you’d like to order?” she said primly, shutting down discussion on the Port Royal Fizz.

We may never know how a bastardised version of Bermuda’s national drink made it to Chi-Town.

 

Anish Kapoor’s stunning Cloud Gate

 

But I can advise that it tasted pretty good, like everything else we had at the Drawing Room, which provided us with culinary delights, including delicious deep-fried guacamole, and plenty of laughs.

That was more than could be said for Uno’s Pizzeria on night number three. I’ve never been one for guide books but I bit the bullet and followed a recommendation for the “best Chicago-style deep dish pizza” in town.

Being a huge lover of Italian thin-crust pizza I knew this was a risky move – and so it proved.

To be fair to Uno’s, a cosy restaurant on the corner of East Ohio and North Wabash, it may well offer the finest version of this beloved city staple.

It’s just a shame that, to my mind, Chicago-style deep dish pizza totally sucks. Chicago gets so much right – breathtaking buildings, amazing public art, a thriving theatre scene and really nice people – but it has got pizza so, so wrong.

Picture a pie crust covered in thick tomato puree. Now picture eating it. I couldn’t and left Uno’s with a rumbling tum.

Champagne in the Signature Lounge on the 96^th floor of the John Hancock Center helped fill the hole.

No mention of Bermuda on the cocktail list here – come on, that would have been too weird – but the late night view of a million twinkling lights across Chicago and beyond more than compensated.

The great thing about the John Hancock Center is that you get to see this spectacular sight just by jumping in and out of an elevator and ordering a reasonably-priced drink.

There are more laborious methods, as we found out the day before, on a visit to the 110-storey Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower.

We queued for a long time to get to the Skydeck on the 103^rd floor – at least an hour-and-a-half. But it was worth the wait and the $16 entry fee.

I’m scared of lots of random things but, happily, not heights, so I danced about with glee on the glass Ledge positioned on the building’s east façade, 1,353 feet above street level. Not so my boyfriend, who eyed the glass box rather more gingerly.

Still, he made it out onto the Ledge of the tallest building in the Western hemisphere and second tallest building in the world – no mean feat for a mild acrophobic.

 

A second view from The Willis Tower

 

The Willis Tower, completed in 1973 and rising to 1,450 feet, highlights for me what is great about the talented, ambitious citizens of big American cities – they make stuff happen. And, often, it’s really cool stuff, like this Chicago icon.

They hear about a tall building somewhere else and say: “We can do better than that.” And they do.

It doesn’t always make the US popular but it ensures their vast urban centres are very exciting to visit.

Chicago is just that way with its 552 parks, 33 beaches, nine museums, two world-class conservatories, 200 theatres and vast number of public works of art.

I think the latter – even more than the dazzling sky-high views and tasty cocktails – were my favourite thing about the city.

 

Random eye-ball sculpture

 

From Anish Kapoor’s stunning Cloud Gate sculpture in Millenium Park to the random 30-foot eyeball we came across after stepping off the “L” train at the corner of State and Van Buren streets, there was so much to see and enjoy.

Best of all was the Crown Fountain, also in Millennium Park, which consists of two giant video screens projecting images of the faces of Chicagoans and spurting out water.

Watching the delight of scores of young children as they skidded in and out of the fountain waiting for the next blast of water was fantastic, smile-inducing, free fun.

Frank Sinatra once sang about Chicago: “I will show you around – I love it.”

I couldn’t agree more. Anyone fancy a trip to the toddling town?

• Travel info: We travelled to Chicago from Bermuda via Newark with Delta and stayed at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel.