Surfside Beach on the Gulf of Mexico

Wednesday 7.5.2014

The hotel's "breakfast" consists of coffee, dry Frosties, and orange juice. The offered Continental Breakfast doesn't even include toast or butter/jam, and there aren't even bowls for the Frosties that one could potentially eat with milk (if there were any).

We spend the day at the beach. Everyone walks around, sits in the sun, or reads. There is a wind and occasionally clouds pass in front of the sun, which immediately makes it quite uncomfortably cold. But these are only short phases and overall it is very bearable.

In the late afternoon, our room shakes and the noise in front of our house is unbearable. A bulldozer is smoothing out large stones in the parking lot so that asphalt can be poured here tomorrow. We complain at the reception and move to another room in another building, which is even quieter. The view is still beautiful across the beach.

We have dinner at the seafood restaurant at the end of the street. Greek-influenced but delicious. Canned beer in the restaurant, that's the USA for you.

In the evening, the refineries are clearly visible in the evening sky. It is a truly adventurous contrast to the supposedly idyllic beach life here in Surfside Beach. In our memory, the oil spill of 2010 comes to mind, when after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, around 800 million liters of crude oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico and was also washed up on this beach.