Bermuda shorts: Explore this beachy British bastion like a local

There’s an instant shorthand when you mention Bermuda: shorts, golf and the Pink Palace.

That’s fair enough in some ways as the island nation is a prime place to tee off, with seven top-flight courses in just 21 square miles, and the Hamilton Princess remains a plush crash pad. It recently spent $15 million to overhaul its Bermudiana wing, creating larger, family-focused suites. 

As for those namesake shorts, they’ve been to blame for men baring their knees for more than a century. Admit it, though — you’re also thinking what Brooklyn-based bar owner St. John Frizell thought before he opened an outpost of his cocktail joint, Sunken Harbor Club, at the luxury resort Cambridge Beaches three years ago: “I’d heard about newlyweds and nearly deads,” he laughs. “But I’m either at the bar, or in the water, on the water or under the water.”

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He’s right. There’s much more to this cluster of islands in the center of the Atlantic than the clichés. “You can sneeze from New York, and you’re there,” says agent Jamie Mussolini of Beachfronts Travel, a Bermuda guru. It takes barely 2½ hours from NYC to reach the territory, which technically remains British soil (think of it as very new New England). 

Now, that flight’s even comfier: swanky, 2-year-old start-up airline BermudAir shuttles to and from nine East Coast airports, including upstate New York’s HPN, with leather seats and punchy rum-spiked cocktails. 

When you land, make sure to rent a vehicle to get around, as distances can be surprising on this long, thin archipelago. Try the battery-powered, open-air Twizy jeep for two (download the Current app before you land to streamline the process). 

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 “I love to throw a book in a backpack, get on a boat and sail to a deserted island, land on the beach and read there for a few hours,” he says. 

Don’t miss the Vixen, either, a shipwreck in shallow enough waters that its bow pokes out of the ocean. 

“Throw an anchor down, swim over the wreck and you’ll see fish feeding on it. It’s like they’re waiting for you to arrive.” 

Bermuda’s balmy temperatures (expect consistent 80s all summer long) make it the northernmost site in which to find coral, he adds.

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The center of the island is dominated by the urban hub of Hamilton, and the offices full of insurance companies and banks — and that Pink Palace, of course. Azura is a brand-new addition to the hotel scene here, a 37-room boutique hotel that opened last summer on South Shore beach just 10 minutes away.

Kristin White, a tour guide who also runs the Long Story Short boutique, grew up here and recommends the often-overlooked beaches amid the urban hubbub, like Admiralty House Park. “Every Tuesday evening during the summer, locals go up there to jump off the cliffs,” she says.

White is now based in the east of the archipelago in the historic hub of St. George, the original colonial-era capital.

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 “It feels like you’ve stepped back in time, because half of them were built before 1900 — it doesn’t look real,” she says.

If you want to overnight in the east, says White, the best option is Hillcrest, a locally owned 14-room former B&B with a buzzy pool scene right in the heart of town. Try some rockfish ribs at Wahoo’s, run by two expat Austrians, or hit Achilles for sundowners — it’s positioned perfectly looking west. 

There’s a strong Indigenous American influence here, too, thanks to enslaved people brought over from New England; tribes come to this part of the island for an annual powwow every June. St. David’s Island was  where the once off-limits American military base sat. Today, it hosts Cooper’s Island Nature Reserve.

 “It’s one of the beautiful places in Bermuda,” she swoons. “The beaches are so pristine, with thick, white, soft sand.” 

That’s one island cliché no one wants to debunk.