Deborah Halverson's Blog

Barcelona, Spain, was city #3 on the Halverson’s sixteen-day spring vacation, which also included stays in Lisbon, Portugal; Madrid, Spain; Lyon, France; and London, England.

Eight months in England has damaged me severely—I’ve forgotten how to go to the beach. Yes, Lowestoft is a ‘beach town,’ but not ‘beach’ in the sense that I grew up with. In San Diego, you put on a swimsuit with maybe a t-shirt and shorts over it for the journey down the sand to the surf. Flip-flops or no shoes at all, sun tan lotion, beach towels, digging toys for small children. In Lowestoft, England’s easterliest point and perched on the North Sea, you trek through the sand in parkas that cover long sleeves, jeans, and long johns. Snow boots and gloves, ski caps and digging toys for small children. Since first arriving in Lowestoft in August, we’ve had just one day warm enough for swimsuits at the North Sea’s edge, but that’s it. We soooo missed San Diego’s warmth that we deliberately planned this Spring Break’s vacation with warm locales in mind. What we got was indeed weather balmy enough for shorts, but it was interspersed with rain and snow.

Yes, snow. You can see it through the train window in this photo.

Barcelona, city #3 of our vacation, greeted us with gray skies, nippy wind, and sprinkles. Not the weather we ordered. But we’re quite used to going out and about in such, so we barely batted an eye and just toured the city bundled as if in Lowestoft. The second day, expecting much of the same, our entire family—me, my husband, our three four-year-olds, and Grandma S.—donned those trusty jeans and parkas once more and this time journeyed beachward. Rain would not keep us away from the surf of the Mediterranean any more than it kept us from the shores of the North Sea. The result of our efforts was an entire day of swimming in sweat. Day Two in Barcelona toasty, sunny, and absolutely glorious.

I tried to comfort myself with the fact that the other tourists wandering around town had heavy coats in their arms or tied around their waists, too, but I could only hang my hat on that flimsy hook for so long: When we reached the Mediterranean’s sandy shore, it was lined as far as the eye could see with savvy beachgoers clad in swimsuits and sun hats, with suntan lotion and towels and digging toys for the children. Dang! Our first warm beach in nine months and we were wearing parkas! I’m almost too embarrassed to write that. My fellow San Diegans, please forgive me, for I know not what I do—I’ve been in England for eight months!

Not ones to let a little thing like being dressed for iceberg climbing in Antarctica distract us from a good time on the beach, we tossed our parkas to the sand, rolled up our jeans, and frolicked happily in the surf. The pastiness of the flesh below our knees was blinding, I’m sure, but the people on the beach had sunglasses so you don’t need to feel sorry for them. Unfortunately, we couldn’t frolic for long, not with skin this pale and no suntan lotion, so after about forty minutes we fled the sun for the sanctuary of an ice cream shop, where we nursed our sunburned necks over Classic Chocolate scoops and bowls of Strawberry Cream. Parkas or no, we’d just splashed in the Mediterranean Sea and now we had ice cream. I love vacation.