Here I sit on the beach....

Here I sit on the beach in La Manzanilla, Mexico, attempting to read my book, a Sue Henry mystery novel.  Knut, I am taken again and again by the sounds and activities of the beach, and just had to stop reading and describe what I see and hear!

This is a small town, off the resort path of Mexico, but definitely on the radar do ex-pats mostly from Canada and the U.S.  It is also a beach spot for Mexican families from inland, mainly Guadalajara.

A scream from the shoreline takes my eyes to a Mexican family with little girls playing in the surf.  One runs up the beach to her mama sitting at a table under the palapa with a shell or rock to show her.  As she runs back down to the water, her grandma calls out something and the girl does a couple of cartwheels an her way back into the surf.

Walking by is a gringo couple, with a dog bounding along with them.  The man throws a ball and the dog runs and jumps and catches the ball in the air.

My eye following the dog, I see another family sitting on the beach above waterline, with vendors of jewelry and beach clothing moving in.  Right behind them is the ice cream vendor, ringing his bicycle type bell and calling out "helado".

Movement from the water catches my eye, and I see a swimmer out past the breaking waves, swimming the crawl parallel to the beach. Not far past the swimmer, is a sailboat slowly coming in under motor power.  There is a catamaran and another single hull sailboat at anchor close in to this area of the beach.  In the far distance at the north end of the bay, I can make out the masts of many sailboats, anchored at Tenacatita, a favorite anchoring spot in the bay.  I wonder if Nicki and John have dropped anchor yet there from their morning jaunt from Barra de Navidad.

Two jet skis go by with two people on each.  I no longer see the swimmer--have they come to shore, or is my view of them blocked by the sun umbrellas on the beach to mt left?

Just in my view under a palapa to my left, I see a local fisherman, tossing a net into the surf, tryi g to catch bait fish.  He and another fisherman provided entertainment for me while I ate my breakfast on the beach a couple of hours ago.

I'll continue to sit here, book in hand, but I don't know how much I will really read today when I have such a wonderful live show in front of me! It's the weekend at a family friendly Mexican beach.

Madrid Continued

A week in Madrid is a long time, especially when I have already seen many of the major sites.  However, I have kept busy for the most part, but have still missed two things high on my list.  Will see if I can hit them on my last weekend here.

The symphony turned out to be ok, not great, for me anyway.  There were singers and I just don´t care much for the soprano opera singing.... It was still nice and I am glad I went, just will be more selective next time!  Upon leaving the concert, which started at 10:30. so ended around midnight, I caught the metro back to the hostal.  But, the workers were on strike, which means slower service, and I had to change lines.  I probably waited at least half an hour at the change point, along with many many other people.  I think it was around 3am when I got back to the hostal, late for you and I, but about the norm for Spaniards that aren´t going out late!

I made it back to the Reina Sophia Museum the next day, during a free entry time. (I actually walked the 2-3 miles there from my hostal and ended up eating lunch at a Thai place.  After 2 1/2 months of Spanish food, it was nice to have some other ethnicity!)  This was the museum with Picasso´s ¨Guernica¨ in which I hadn´t had time to see everything that I had wanted to.  I came across some really nice charcoals in one gallery of a Basque fisherman which I really enjoyed.  Also some Mi´ro and Dali´s that seemed really out of character.  Haven´t had a chance to look them up yet, but I think these were some of their early works before they did abstract - or whatever their most commonly known works are called.

Sunday´s list included going to the Rastro flea market and hitting at least one other museum that had free entry on Sunday.  I succeeded in the first, but not the second!  The market was incredible, with everything from antiques, new clothes, used clothes, souvenirs, collector items such as coins, old posters, etc., and just about anything else you can imagine.  It took up block after block of city streets and there were some areas where it was hard to pass through all the people.  I did a lot of looking, some picture taking, and no buying!  But, by the time I had my fill, I realized it was too late to get to the museums, as they were on the other side of the city.

 I chose instead to walk through Retiro Park, Madrid´s Central Park.  It had been royal hunting grounds and is beautifully laid out.  There were two buildings with exhibits, curated by the Reina Sophia.  Hmmm, interesting!  The first was in the "Crystal Palace" and was conceived by the space --- whatever!  It was string strung around the posts throughout the beautiful building!  The other was just as bad as far as I was concerned - although the exterior of that building was also beautiful.