Almuñecar

On Friday in class, Ana (my professor) told us that this was the last good weekend to go to the beach before it starts getting a little colder. On Thursday night, a bunch of us had already talked about possibly going to the beach on Saturday so after Ana said that, I was sold. Everyone from CEA ended up deciding to go to Almuñecar, which is directly south of Granada and only about an hour away by bus. We tried to buy our bus tickets ahead of time, but in order to buy them online you have to use a Spanish credit card and it was too late to buy them at a travel agency. On Saturday morning, Sophie and I took a taxi to the bus station, got there around 9:30am, and from what I can tell were two of the last people to get tickets on the 10:15am bus. It cost us about 15 Euros ($20) for a trip there and back. The bus was really nice and the scenery on the way there was gorgeous. We literally had to drive through the mountains to get to the beach, which I still can't get over. There was a McDonald's close to the bus station in Almuñecar and about half of the Tulane kids rushed over there so quickly you would think they hadn't seen one in years. The rest of us went to a grocery store and bought gigantic bottles of water (seriously I've never seen water bottles this big in the U.S.) for 52 Euro cents which is about 67 U.S. cents. It only took 5 or 10 minutes to walk from the bus station area to the beach. We found a good spot and spread out.

This is the view from our spot on the beach.

I was really surprised by how different the beaches are in Spain. I guess I hadn't really thought about it much until we got there, but it was a Mediterranean beach so of course it's different. First of all, the beaches in Spain specifically are topless. Obviously going topless is optional, and it's mostly children and old women who participate. The other two big variances between Mediterranean and Atlantic beaches are the sand and the water. The part of the sand farthest away from the water is literally just rocks. Then there's a sort of middle area where it's rough sand mixed with rocks. The part closest to the water is basically all rocks again and it continues like that into the water. During the day while were all lounging on the beach, I kept seeing people in my group lift up their towels and pull out big rocks from the sand. It was a little annoying but also pretty comical. The water itself was freezing. I got in the water in the afternoon (the hottest part of the day) and was shivering because it was so cold. I even put my head under, thinking it would help me adjust to the temperature, but it actually just made me colder. 

The beach was really, really busy in the morning when we got there but people started leaving around 13:00 or 14:00 for siesta. It got a little busier by the time we left around 17:00, although it still wasn't nearly as crowded as it was in the morning. The CEA group alone included about 30 people spread out in a few different spots on the beach. Sophie and I were together with the Tulane kids and other CEA people from various schools. Brittany goes to Illinois State University so she was hanging out with the rest of the ISU kids at a spot close to ours. I basically just sat around all day and chatted with everyone. We got lunch at a quant little restaurant near the beach. It took forever, just like every other restaurant in Andalucia, but none of us minded because it was so beautiful outside. Sophie and I had originally bought our return tickets for 20:00 but we were tired from being in the sun all day so we changed our tickets to 18:00 for only 62 Euro cents. I managed to get a small tan, not get a sunburn, and get home using the Granada bus system. All in all, it was a fantastic day at the beach!