Just returned from a 3 day stay at Watercolours Bed and Breakfast in Warwick parish Bermuda.

The B&B is a part of local artist Carole Holding's home, and my what a beautiful home it is! The B&B rooms are all located on the lower level of the home and each has french doors that look out onto the patio and the harbor.

The rooms are very nicely decorated -- all marble floors, very nice bathroom w/ modern touches and upscale fixtures. The rooms are quite roomy and include nice touches such as ceiling fans, cable tv, robes in closet, large closet for that matter.

This B&B is very hands off for the most part, which in my opinion is a good thing. I've stayed at other B&Bs where the host sits down with you at breakfast and is really chatty, etc. Carole is not that way... she lets guests be on their own.

Each morning we had a lovely continental breakfast layed out for us in the common room -- complete with crystal stemware for Orange Juice. Each guest makes their own individual coffee in a French Press coffee maker and has 2 choices of coffee grounds. The rest of the food consisted mainly of scones, toast, jam, cereal, oatmeal, muffins, a cup of fruit (pineapple one day, melon another day), yogurt. That's about it. My husband was disappointed that we didn't get a hot breakfast with the cost of the room (as we have at other B&Bs), but I knew what to expect going into it.

While Watercolours is on the Harborfront, it is in no manner beach front. I would venture to say you couldn't walk to the beach from there (it would be a loooooong walk up hills and winding streets). So unless you plan to spend all of your time taking the nearby ferry to downtown hamilton, you better count on renting a moped. There is a moped company that Carole will refer you to that will pick you up right at Watercolours and bring you to their bike place and at the end of your visit you can just leave your bikes at Watercolours and they will come to pick the bikes back up.

On bike you can be at the beaches in 10-15 minutes, which was a lot closer than I had thought it would be.

I thought Watercolours had quite a convenient location for people who wanted to get around a lot and not be stuck in one place. Easy access to Hamilton via ferry, easy access to beaches via motorbike... the only place that was a haul was St. George which was about 45 min away on bike. We never did find where the bus stop is from Watercolours...let's just say that it probably isn't too close or convenient.

Oh, the pool at Watercolours is very pretty and cute although it was too cold to go in it when we were there. The backyard of the place facing the harbor seems like a lovely place to hang out when the weather is warm... we just got stuck with bad weather all of the days we were there.

A few reviews of the area:

1. Tom Moores Tavern: elegant dining in a unique manor house setting. Food was excellant. Many entrees made or served table-side (eg: Pasta appetizer was made tableside, desert was flambeyed tableside). Men must wear jacket. This was a whopping $30 EACH WAY cab ride from Watercolours. We could've biked it in about 25 minutes, but we were all dressed up for dinner and I didn't want to arrive to a nice place on a motorbike.

2. Lobster Pot in city of Hamilton: I LOVED this place. But of course, I love lobster. And all other shellfish for that matter. Not too fancy of a place. And not exactly specializing in Bermudian cuisine (although you can certainly find bermuda fish dishes on the menu), but I thought their array of lobster dishes were out of this world -- curried lobster, lobster theramador, lobster newberg, etc.


3. Swizzle Inn. Swizzles were good. Nachos were enormous!

4. Baraccuda Grill, city of Hamilton. Disappointing. Food tried to be creative, but ended up being bland tasting and very ho-hum overall. I had lobster something or other and it had more rockfish than lobster (didn't call this out on the menu description). My husband had calamari that was supposed to be seasoned with wasabi -- but really it was just fried calamari rings that had a hint of green to them, but didn't taste like much of anything. We had chocolate fondue for desert and it was below par-- something about it just didn't taste like real chocolate. This was our most expensive meal and our least enjoyable.

5. Gibbs Lighthouse restaurant: Cute place, had breakfast here on last day. Lively breakfast menu with lots to choose from. Also would recommend this place for doing the traditional afternoon tea thing.

Things to do:

1. Crystal Caves -- we did this because it rained when we were there, but it was interesting enough. Wasn't on my original agenda, but thought it was worthwhile.

2. Horseshoe Beach -- way better than Elbow beach. Keep walking and walk through all the interesting rock formations beyond it. Never have seen a beach quite like it in all of my ventures through Hawaii and the carribean.

3. Dockyard -- looks like a cool place to be when the weather is nice and people are there. I would like to have seen the art stuff there, but it closed at 5 pm on Saturday. Try the Bermuda beer sampler at Frog & Onion. And feel free to take your motorbike with you on a ferry from the Dockyard back to Hamilton.

Things I'd skip:

1. Blue Hole Park. Wasn't that impressed with the blue hole.

2. Elbow Beach.