Rockaways

Sometimes I forget we live so close to the ocean.  Really. New York is a city surrounded by so much water and yet I still have a tendency to overlook the beaches here. In truth, we've only been out to Long Island a handful of times to enjoy the surf in 7 years.  So this summer, we decided it was time to make the beach a priority. June passed us by without a chance to get our toes wet, mostly because of our long trip to California.  But now that July is here, we are trying to get in our beachy groove. So earlier in the week, we took a drive out passed Trader Joe's on Woodhaven Blvd. and on over a couple of bridges to the Rockaways.  Up to now I'd mainly heard about this stretch of Queens beachfront in a dismissive way. Like yeah, it's close and all, but who cares? So I was starting to get curious if it was worth a look and then we bumped into some friends at the park who had only great things to say about it. And that's all it took. So off we went on a week day when the weather was fine and the crowds were thin.  What a great beach day it turned out to be...

Hard to believe you can see the Manhattan skyline less than 10 minutes from the beach.  Our travel time from Sunnyside was only about 40 minutes each way and it almost felt shorter since it takes you through a lot of neighborhoods that I haven't really seen before.  Elisa fell asleep on both trips--poor thing--but once in the water, she loved it.  The girl is fearless and she is starting to really have fun with the small waves.  I was mostly in charge of keeping Carolina out of the water, or at least not letting her crawl her way into the surf. She was fearless in another way--totally loving the splashing and having no idea that it was about to crest over her head.  We knew there was an offshoot of a Venezuelan restaurant we love in the East Village somewhere along the boardwalk, so seeing the sign for "Caracas-Rockaways" was a major score. Arepas on the beach? In the shade with a hammock? Yes, please. And to make it even better Steve's Ice Cream made some fine assorted flavors (Salty Caramel was a hit) and the iced coffee was good and strong. I was in beach heaven. So yeah, it was just about my ideal city beach getaway, except that next time we need an umbrella.  We were home by 5 p.m. and Carolina took a long nap while we started cleaning sand out of our toes.  Of course, I'm still sweeping up piles of sand around the apartment, but since we liked the place so much, we're heading back on Tuesday. Guess I shouldn't worry too much about the floors. Maybe we'll just bring enough back to have a beach party in Elisa's room.