A Reliable Happy Place

I have never walked a beach that I didn't like.  Cold, hot, warm, rainy, windy, calm, balmy, rocky, sandy -- it doesn't matter.  The keyword is simply beach.  If it's a beach, I'm in a happy place.   

So, it's no surprise that rather than stay in the heart of the Gothic quarter in Barcelona proper during a week long vacation to the city, I chose instead to find lodging on of all places... the beach.  Out of the way, a 40 minute train ride from downtown Barcelona, and a kilometer walk from the subway station.  None of that mattered. Every day, I was going to return from doing hours and hours of tourist like things to my happy place (as a side note, I am very grateful that my traveling companion Linda was patient and unruffled by my odd choices).

When I arrived in Barcelona at 7:30 a.m. on a Thursday morning after a transatlantic flight , not a cloud was to be found in the sky. The sun shone bright and warm -- more like it was mid-summer than the end of winter. 

All the icky feelings that came with sitting for hours on end at 30,000+ feet, eating airline food, accumulating jet lag, and trying to pretend that turbulence over a vast, deep ocean was no big deal started to fade away when my feet hit the sand.  My ears and auditory nerves, rattled by fourteen hours of nonstop noise from airport to airplane and then again ...  rested in the rhythmic sounds of the waves coming off the Balearic sea -- the body of water between the Mediterranean Sea and the Balearic Islands off the northeastern coast of Spain.  Ahhh... this was better than any spa anywhere.   

Even after returning to the hotel room and realizing how tired I really was, I couldn't help but stand at the floor to ceiling windows on the thirteenth floor, enjoying the view.  For me -- so much better than watching masses of tourists swarm about in the streets below from a downtown hotel.   

No matter how beautiful Barcelona was going to be, this was the perfect place to start a vacation in Spain.  

During my walk on the beach, I also encountered this  monkey who appeared to agree with my opinion. He sits overlooking the sea and apparently contemplating his flask of anise-flavored liqueur.  Just across the street from the monkey and the beach, the Anis del Mono factory has been making anisette liqueur for over 150 years. I wonder if it turns all monkeys to bronze... or just this one.