Un Día en la Playa

So what does one do when they have the weekend off and its a nice sunny day? You go to the beach of course. That's if there is one nearby. In my case there certainly is, and its about 8 km away in Benidorm. On a typical "beach day" we would take a bus down the mountain to la Cala de Finestrat. One fare is about 1.25, except if its Sunday and you miss the only two buses running that day. Which we did, so we grabbed a taxi. Our driver basically pulled up right next to the ocean. After surveying the area we settled right next to a group of beach chairs with umbrellas. I wish I could have sat in one, but they cost money and I was really looking forward to getting a tan. Because I really need more color and my paleness is almost blinding. Upon relaxing Lindsay and I quickly realized the difference between this beach and the ones at home. Here in Benidorm and possibly other beaches in Europe, you can go completely topless. What!? Yeap it is as common as chewing gum. I almost felt out of place being completely clothed. Whats even harder is trying to take photos without capturing some topless woman in your photograph.

After about 2 hours of sunbathing, we decided to walk around a bit and try to catch a bus back home. The one thing that stuck out to me the most was how many foreigners vacation here. There was so much English being spoken, it didn't even feel like Spain sometimes. I guess this place is a big vacation spot for a lot of Brits and Australians, and they were much help in giving us directions. We soon noticed that we were getting too black and decided to try and go home. The only problem was that no buses were running back to Finestrat. We only noticed this after three bus trips around town. We even stumbled back into my old hood when I was here two years ago. This clearly was the funniest part of the trip. We had no cell phone and no way of contacting our team.

We walked upon this hostel looking motel to ask to use a phone. After further inspection, we decided this was not the best place seeing as it looked like a serial killer resided there. Across the street was a better lit, nicer looking hotel. We walked in and asked the guy to call us a cab. And after further inspection of this place, I have come to the realization that it was a burlesque- style hotel. Girls were walking around in lingerie, and men were coming and going. I laughed to myself because I couldn't decide what was funnier; the serial killer inspired hotel or the hotel equipped with an escort service right across the street. We managed to visit both within five minutes. We quickly got heck outta dodge.

You will all be happy to know that we made it home safely and decided next time we should have a better plan. Overall it was a good day at the beach.