Newport beach
2006/11/12 No comments yetThe first week has been very stressful, but I’ve finally managed to enjoy some of the perks of living in California. Irvine isn’t exactly on the coastline, yet the beach is less than 10 miles away. One of the closest towns to it which is indeed right next to the sea is Newport beach. This is a small town as many in the world, but it seems to be right in the spotlight as it has been featured in some TV shows such as The O.C. In fact, it is not the only featured town of the zone. Not far away we can also find Laguna beach which also has its own show.
As I was saying, last Sunday we went to the beach. Don’t get me wrong, Barcelona also has a beach; it’s not a great one, but it’s more than enough. Yet this one had nothing to do with any beach I had previously seen. Here everything is huge. The waves are huge, the beach is incredibly long and the sand must be 200 yards wide.
As you can see, the lifeguard station has the number 61, which in fact indicates there are more than 60 stations along the beach. Wow! It is exactly as seen in Baywatch… Being in the surfer’s land, we had to give it a try, and my friend Javi sure did; well, it was not exactly surfing but close enough 
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Having these dimensions, it is impossible that the beach is overcrowded as we are used to in Spain, so we had plenty of room for ourselves. Another significant difference from Barcelona is the fact that here it is not allowed to smoke on the beach. I don’t know if that’s stepping too much on every one’s decisions but it makes a lot of sense to me (I’m not a smoker) since the beach will stay clean a lot longer. I was also surprised to discover that top less is strictly forbidden 
; Apparently, this is an issue of public decency… I didn’t know we were so indecent in Europe.
Anyway, we sunbathed, swam, played volleyball for a while and after eating we went home. It was my first good day in California! When leaving it was still sunny, but if we had stayed a little longer I guess we could have seen one of these magic sunsets…
Unbelievable.
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