December 20, 2006

Dear Sir,My wife and I have been visitors to beautiful Bermuda for 20 years, enjoying your gracious hospitality, good manners and sense of humour.I feel compelled to recount a strange experience that happened to us on Tuesday 19 December in Hamilton.

Around 12.30 p.m. in Gibbons store in Reid Street along with six local residents we were stuck in one of their elevators. What ensued could well have become a Monty Python sketch had the potential consequences not been so serious. Calls for assistance on the elevator's intercom resulted in a request for our location, which none of us could make the person on the other end understand. Several attempts later we realised that the emergency system connects to Otis Elevator in the USA.

During the course of the next 20 minutes we had several shouts from outside asking "is there someone stuck in the lift?". Our requests for assistance was not bringing anyone in management anywhere near us. Eventually an engineer arrived on the elevator roof to immediately berate us for easing a couple of polystyrene panels in order to get some air into the now stifling atmosphere......not the best reaction to our plight!

Our eventual release was secured but in the total absence of any explanation or apology from Gibbons' management.I must say I am surprised at Gibbons' lack of safety precautions and consideration for it's customers. This experience will not deter us from visiting Bermuda again, but will certainly make us wary of using elevators here. Yours sincerely,MR B WOOD

UK visitor, temporarily resident in Devonshir>December 4, 2006

Dear Sir,Never have I felt so compelled to write to the residents of a place I have visited. My husband and I arrived to your beautiful country last Thursday, November 16, 2006, all the way from Hamlet, North Carolina. Such a beautiful site as our plane landed. The water as well as the surroundings were breathtaking! As we boarded the BeeLine Bus, we purchased before arrival, we were amazed at the beautiful surroundings on our trip over the Fairmont Southampton. The flowers blooming in November were a special treat for me, as well as the homes all painted in different colours, with the lime green being my favourite and the yellows catching my husband's eye.

I could write all day about the wonderful town of Hamilton and the fact you have stores in your town and you do not have to go to a big mall away from town, as in the states: and the residents never appeared to be in a rush or hurried. Everyone was so friendly and seemed to be so happy and content with their lives: whether they were clerks in stores, taxi drivers or the sweet lady where we rented our scooter, one could not ask to be treated any nicer: not to mention the treatment we received at the Fairmont Southampton. The staff went above and beyond to compensate our needs and were even more so after I ended up in the hotel's wheelchair.

On our second day there, Friday, November 17, 2006, I had an accident and really messed up my ankle, which I have since discovered is broken. Two of your lifelong residents, which were following behind us, stopped and offered their assistance. I failed to get their names, as I was a bit upset, but they both work in your local hospital. She worked in critical care (of something to that effect) and he was a Security Guard. They were on their way home from work, but did not hesitate to put me in her car (even thought I insisted I was okay) and drive me to our hotel at Southampton as my husband followed on the scooter.

If someone reading this letter can help me and let me know their names as well as an address to contact or give them our address to contact us, them I would be most grateful. I do not feel I thanked them enough as I was in much pain. Our taxi driver "Eddie" said everyone reads this newspaper and I thank him for giving us the information concerning contacting the newspaper. I promise we will be back: but next time I will be taking a taxi or bus over to do my shopping, for I do not want to miss any of your beautiful country!ED AND CHERYL PERNELL

Hamlet, North CaroliB>