- 5,076
- Panama City, FL
Got a call from a friend of mine a couple months ago. He has a video production company, and a friend of his has a lights and sound company. The lights and sound guy was doing stage light and sound for a concert, and hired the video guy to do video at said concert, and the call was, "Do you wanna go?"
Hmm. Lemme think.
Yeah, I guess so, OK. I gotta get a passport. Which, it turns out, was why the call was so far ahead of time, so they can get my app in and pay for my passport. How cool is that?
The concert was Mary J. Blige, opened by Robin Thicke, neither of whom I'm what you'd call a fan of, but that's irrelavant. I can work a TV camera, and we were gonna be there a whole week. I'm in.
We flew in on Tuesday the 11th, went through Customs, sat in the little office while they tracked down our work permits, and we had an afternoon and evening to kill.
During that afternoon and evening we discovered what Bermudians thought of the value of our dollar. They think enough of it to equate their dollar with it 1 for 1, but they seemed to want a whole lot more of them for stuff than they ought to. Dinner at an ordinary restaurant will start at about 35 bucks. In the grocery store a loaf of bread is about 5 bucks, a 2-liter Coke is 4.50, blah blah blah. Our per diem wasn't looking so good, obviously having been negotiated by someone unfamiliar with Bermuda's economy.
So we stayed at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess hotel, which could provide any need its guests might ever require right there on the grounds, except a cheap breakfast. (Croissant and a juice would be around 7 bucks, but what good is a single croissant?!??!) The taxi ride from the airport to the hotel gave us an idea of the congestion experienced by residents of the island. About 65,000 people live on the islands, which is about 15 miles long by 5 wide, but most of that is water. There's about 22 square miles of land making up the islands. All the streets are winding hilly 2-lane affairs, if there's room for both lanes. Many are walled on the sides by the rock they were cut through. No real estate was wasted for anything so mundane as transportation.
As a result, non-residents are not allowed to drive. There are no rental cars, and the largest motor vehicle available to non-residents is a 50cc scooter. Residents are permitted a single car per household, but no limit on scooters or motorcycles. Even those are limited, though, to 150cc displacement. Needless to say, there are a TRILLION tiny bikes and scooters all over Bermuda! Oh, yeah. Being originally British and all that, they drive on the wrong side of the road, which even as a pedestrian is quite annoying, having to remember to look left, not right, before stepping out to be killed.
So we toured Hamilton by foot on Wednesday morning, went to the concert venue (National Stadium) Wednesday afternoon to lay cable and set up projectors and screens. We returned Thursday evening after dark to align video in the screens and projectors, and the concert was Friday evening. We were at the venue from midday Friday til about 2:00 Saturday morning, for the tear-down after the concert. Returned Saturday morning to finish tear-down and packing the containers for shipment back to the states. Big dinner provided by the bosses for all the sound, lights, and video guys, and Sunday was a tourist day, before flying back Monday evening. The late flight Monday was because there was supposed to be another concert Saturday night, but it cancelled for lack of sales. I don't even recall who it was, now.
So, pics of Bermuda, starting with a 5-frame stitch of the hotel grounds:
Waterfront side of the hotel, with the yacht "Venetian" tied up. The yacht is for hire, if (like the magazine describing it said) you are the president of a very large corporation or small country and want to entertain a hundred or so of your closest friends.
The 150cc limit apparently does not apply to the long arm of the law.
All of the mannequins in this shop were unusual, but this one was just creepy.
The ferry terminal in Hampton. $4.50 gets you anywhere in the country, by bus or by boat!
The marina behind the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. We'll see more of these boatd later.
The stage being built. The towers on the right are for our video screens and projectors, and another set were on the left side.
5-frame stitch of the early setup at the stadium:
Me photographing while others do the work. Truthfully, since I was hired help and not an actual employee, I wasn't allowed to handle the rented 60,000-dollar 1080p high-def projectors.
Our cameras were set up on a level of this scaffold unerneath the spotlights, shooting over the tents covering the sound boards.
First screen up, our plan is validated. Ready to do three more!
My access credential:
You remember the yacht club marina earlier? There was a regatta under way, and the finish line was immediately behind our hotel. That's the official's boat they are passing, with the marker just out of frame to the left. This was Thursday afternoon.
Green spinnaker was in third place, but at this point on a course to sail past the marker on the wrong side.
Much yelling ensued, along with a couple of hard turns, but they made it across correctly, only losing 2 places at the end. Oops.
Others coming in
Three of us took a little walking tour Sunday morning, our free day.
I don't know if this is someone's private driveway or if it's a public street.
Hamilton City Hall
Bermuda's cathedral. There is something unsettling about palm trees on a cathedral's grounds.
The hotel provides a ferry for guests, free of charge, between the Hamilton Princess and the other Fairmont hotel at Southampton. This is the Hamilton Princess from the ferry.
Some sights from the ferry ride.
When you work for a video production company, you carry a better camera than most tourists. 1080 mini-DV.
The Fairmont Southampton viewed from the ferry.
Gibbs Hill lighthouse. We shall return here momentarily.
The hotel had shuttle buses to bring us up the hill from the ferry terminal. When we arrived at the hotel we asked about Italian food, and were directed to a restaurant down by the beach, a 10-minute walk. Steeply downhill. Two of the buses passed us as we walked down this steep hill in the summer heat, yet no one had mentioned that we could have ridden down. . . . .
5-frame stitch further around the hotel. The curvature is not a distortion, the golf course plays that slope!!!!
Further down our walk we rounded some trees and saw the Atlantic. It was our 6th day there, yet this was our first view of the Atlantic since leaving the airport for the hotel!
The hotel's beach:
After finding the restaurant, three of our group of five decided enough was enough and they headed back to the ferry for the 4:30 ride back to our own hotel. Two of us stayed behind, determined to climb the lighthouse. This is another view from the road along that walk, 3 frames stitched.
From the base of the lighthouse. I have a Quicktime-360 I made from the top which you can get here, but it's 20 megabytes and on a plain ol' cable modem, so be prepared to wait 5 or ten minutes. It's worthwhile, though, truly.
After the lighthouse my friend and I decided to visit the Dockyards area. This is the 18th-century British naval base converted to a modern tourist processor, with shops, museums, restaurants, etc. It is where the attack on Washington, D.C. was launched from during the War of 1812. We waited over an hour for the correct bus, but finally got there.
If you take a cruise to Bermuda, the Dockyards is where you put in to port.
Seaward fortifications
As we gathered around the bus stop we discovered that the bus which dropped us off was apparently the last bus of the day to the Dockyards. Unimaginable, as it was only 6 PM, but the buses were done for the day here, it being Sunday. We were among a group at the stop making the same discovery more or less simultaneously, and it worked out that we all shared a cab to get to Somerset, just a couple of miles away, but the buses ran there until 9:30. Cab ride was about 8 bucks per group. Then a 25-minute wait for a bus, a 30-minute ride, and we were back in Hamilton.
Hmm. Lemme think.
Yeah, I guess so, OK. I gotta get a passport. Which, it turns out, was why the call was so far ahead of time, so they can get my app in and pay for my passport. How cool is that?
The concert was Mary J. Blige, opened by Robin Thicke, neither of whom I'm what you'd call a fan of, but that's irrelavant. I can work a TV camera, and we were gonna be there a whole week. I'm in.
We flew in on Tuesday the 11th, went through Customs, sat in the little office while they tracked down our work permits, and we had an afternoon and evening to kill.
During that afternoon and evening we discovered what Bermudians thought of the value of our dollar. They think enough of it to equate their dollar with it 1 for 1, but they seemed to want a whole lot more of them for stuff than they ought to. Dinner at an ordinary restaurant will start at about 35 bucks. In the grocery store a loaf of bread is about 5 bucks, a 2-liter Coke is 4.50, blah blah blah. Our per diem wasn't looking so good, obviously having been negotiated by someone unfamiliar with Bermuda's economy.
So we stayed at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess hotel, which could provide any need its guests might ever require right there on the grounds, except a cheap breakfast. (Croissant and a juice would be around 7 bucks, but what good is a single croissant?!??!) The taxi ride from the airport to the hotel gave us an idea of the congestion experienced by residents of the island. About 65,000 people live on the islands, which is about 15 miles long by 5 wide, but most of that is water. There's about 22 square miles of land making up the islands. All the streets are winding hilly 2-lane affairs, if there's room for both lanes. Many are walled on the sides by the rock they were cut through. No real estate was wasted for anything so mundane as transportation.
As a result, non-residents are not allowed to drive. There are no rental cars, and the largest motor vehicle available to non-residents is a 50cc scooter. Residents are permitted a single car per household, but no limit on scooters or motorcycles. Even those are limited, though, to 150cc displacement. Needless to say, there are a TRILLION tiny bikes and scooters all over Bermuda! Oh, yeah. Being originally British and all that, they drive on the wrong side of the road, which even as a pedestrian is quite annoying, having to remember to look left, not right, before stepping out to be killed.
So we toured Hamilton by foot on Wednesday morning, went to the concert venue (National Stadium) Wednesday afternoon to lay cable and set up projectors and screens. We returned Thursday evening after dark to align video in the screens and projectors, and the concert was Friday evening. We were at the venue from midday Friday til about 2:00 Saturday morning, for the tear-down after the concert. Returned Saturday morning to finish tear-down and packing the containers for shipment back to the states. Big dinner provided by the bosses for all the sound, lights, and video guys, and Sunday was a tourist day, before flying back Monday evening. The late flight Monday was because there was supposed to be another concert Saturday night, but it cancelled for lack of sales. I don't even recall who it was, now.
So, pics of Bermuda, starting with a 5-frame stitch of the hotel grounds:
Waterfront side of the hotel, with the yacht "Venetian" tied up. The yacht is for hire, if (like the magazine describing it said) you are the president of a very large corporation or small country and want to entertain a hundred or so of your closest friends.
The 150cc limit apparently does not apply to the long arm of the law.
All of the mannequins in this shop were unusual, but this one was just creepy.
The ferry terminal in Hampton. $4.50 gets you anywhere in the country, by bus or by boat!
The marina behind the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. We'll see more of these boatd later.
The stage being built. The towers on the right are for our video screens and projectors, and another set were on the left side.
5-frame stitch of the early setup at the stadium:
Me photographing while others do the work. Truthfully, since I was hired help and not an actual employee, I wasn't allowed to handle the rented 60,000-dollar 1080p high-def projectors.
Our cameras were set up on a level of this scaffold unerneath the spotlights, shooting over the tents covering the sound boards.
First screen up, our plan is validated. Ready to do three more!
My access credential:
You remember the yacht club marina earlier? There was a regatta under way, and the finish line was immediately behind our hotel. That's the official's boat they are passing, with the marker just out of frame to the left. This was Thursday afternoon.
Green spinnaker was in third place, but at this point on a course to sail past the marker on the wrong side.
Much yelling ensued, along with a couple of hard turns, but they made it across correctly, only losing 2 places at the end. Oops.
Others coming in
Three of us took a little walking tour Sunday morning, our free day.
I don't know if this is someone's private driveway or if it's a public street.
Hamilton City Hall
Bermuda's cathedral. There is something unsettling about palm trees on a cathedral's grounds.
The hotel provides a ferry for guests, free of charge, between the Hamilton Princess and the other Fairmont hotel at Southampton. This is the Hamilton Princess from the ferry.
Some sights from the ferry ride.
When you work for a video production company, you carry a better camera than most tourists. 1080 mini-DV.
The Fairmont Southampton viewed from the ferry.
Gibbs Hill lighthouse. We shall return here momentarily.
The hotel had shuttle buses to bring us up the hill from the ferry terminal. When we arrived at the hotel we asked about Italian food, and were directed to a restaurant down by the beach, a 10-minute walk. Steeply downhill. Two of the buses passed us as we walked down this steep hill in the summer heat, yet no one had mentioned that we could have ridden down. . . . .
5-frame stitch further around the hotel. The curvature is not a distortion, the golf course plays that slope!!!!
Further down our walk we rounded some trees and saw the Atlantic. It was our 6th day there, yet this was our first view of the Atlantic since leaving the airport for the hotel!
The hotel's beach:
After finding the restaurant, three of our group of five decided enough was enough and they headed back to the ferry for the 4:30 ride back to our own hotel. Two of us stayed behind, determined to climb the lighthouse. This is another view from the road along that walk, 3 frames stitched.
From the base of the lighthouse. I have a Quicktime-360 I made from the top which you can get here, but it's 20 megabytes and on a plain ol' cable modem, so be prepared to wait 5 or ten minutes. It's worthwhile, though, truly.
After the lighthouse my friend and I decided to visit the Dockyards area. This is the 18th-century British naval base converted to a modern tourist processor, with shops, museums, restaurants, etc. It is where the attack on Washington, D.C. was launched from during the War of 1812. We waited over an hour for the correct bus, but finally got there.
If you take a cruise to Bermuda, the Dockyards is where you put in to port.
Seaward fortifications
As we gathered around the bus stop we discovered that the bus which dropped us off was apparently the last bus of the day to the Dockyards. Unimaginable, as it was only 6 PM, but the buses were done for the day here, it being Sunday. We were among a group at the stop making the same discovery more or less simultaneously, and it worked out that we all shared a cab to get to Somerset, just a couple of miles away, but the buses ran there until 9:30. Cab ride was about 8 bucks per group. Then a 25-minute wait for a bus, a 30-minute ride, and we were back in Hamilton.
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