More Beaches to Write About

As I’ve written before, any year is a good year when I get to walk on the beach. This summer, I’ve walked along two beaches and seen several others.

The first beach was in California—on Balboa Island in Newport Beach. My husband and I took his mother to visit in June. She had vacationed on Balboa Island as a girl, and my husband also spent several summer days there when he visited his grandparents in California as a kid. He had I had stayed a couple of days on Balboa a few years back.

My mother-in-law talked about her high school days on Balboa in the 1940s, when she and friends would rent a beach house for spring break or a summer holiday. They would persuade a mother or two to chaperone, then the girls sunbathed, ate hamburgers and ice cream, and bought souvenirs. Not much different from how kids want to spend their holidays seventy years later.

On our California trip this year, we also stopped at a couple of oceanfront parks, including Point Fermin Park in San Pedro, California, a state park with a lighthouse on cliffs above the Pacific.

And on our Baltic Sea cruise in July, my husband and I walked along a pier in Warnemünde, Germany—another town with waterfront restaurants (more sausage than hamburgers . . . though ice cream was prevalent), souvenirs, and seagulls. It reminded me a lot of the beach on Balboa Island.

Finally, I got to see the Danish seacoast north of Copenhagen. We were on a bus tour, so I couldn’t get out and walk on the beach, but I saw several sandy strips and lovely marinas. The seaside also featured handsome villas that looked a lot like the housing around Balboa. But Denmark had castles also.

I came away from my beach experiences this summer refreshed by the time by the sea (and on the sea in an ocean-going vessel, but that will be another post). And I realized that humans in every nation feel the same. The sun and the surf are calming influences in a world that everywhere is growing more hectic and contentious. We all need time on the beach.

When did you last spend time on the beach?