Crystal Coast (NC) - A day at the beach with sunburn

Sunday 30.05. – Atlantic Beach (North Carolina)

A day for the beach! We get some fruit, coffee, and a salad from the supermarket for lunch and bring a big bottle of our favorite rosé from Beringer. But that's the ultimate faux pas! At the checkout, we are looked at like criminals and the bottle is snatched away from us! On Sundays, you can't buy alcohol in North Carolina before 12:00 PM (mind you, it's about buying, not about consuming!). Wonderful regulation. So typical American.

So here we are at 10:30 AM with coffee and fruit on the beach, which is wide, empty, and wonderfully white. The sea is incredibly calm, but ice-cold - at least for me. The sun is shining. With an audiobook playing in my ear, I walk along the beach, sit down in a big hole that someone seems to have dug there. I call Henning and wish him a happy birthday.

Every year I'm somewhere else. Last year we were in Canada near Lake Okanagan, at some point I made this call from Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Who knows where I'll be next year? Suddenly the beach patrol comes and scolds me that I have to fill in the hole again, otherwise they will drive into it in the dark. I can understand that they don't like it, but I won't dig a hole in the beach measuring 2 x 2m and 1m deep with my bare hands, which I didn't make. I explain this to her, she doesn't care, but she doesn't come back until I leave the beach later.

At 2:00 PM, I've had enough sun because we haven't really gotten much so far and I realize that I'm slowly turning red. The hotel is just across the street from our beach. The room is not cleaned. Trash, towels, everything is still there and I suspect that this is supposed to be a vacation rental where we have to clean everything ourselves. That's why there are written instructions to remove the sheets and throw away the trash when checking out...

On the balcony that runs in front of the rooms, which passes by all the rooms, I sit down in the shade and see bright red feet - that doesn't look good....

The feet quickly become a problem. I walk like I have prosthetics. They are fire red and swollen when evening sets in. Great, Mrs. H.! On the way to dinner in Beaufort, I have to buy burn ointment and also find a beach chair for $9.99.

Beaufort is nice. Many yachts, right on the boardwalk, which is not overly long. We only hear English, there are no European tourists here. The town has many old houses on Front Street, it looks like a movie set. We eat outside in front of the yachts. The food is not that great.

Doesn't matter. We're back at the hotel at 9:00 PM and lather on the lotion. Gitta's back is bright red, my legs and shins are too, and my feet are fire red and look like balloons...