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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 1686492" data-attributes="member: 2205">The Great Dyal Vacation of 2004 Trip Journal Entry #8: July 9thAfter our fairly hectic days at Universal Studios, we wanted to spend one day actually relaxing before going back and picking up the kids, so we went up to Daytona Beach, checked in early to our hotel and spent the day, literally, just sitting on the beach.  Here's a few points of note:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Daytona Beach, like most long-time resort area, is really pretty seedy.  The hotels all look dirty and run-down, the little stores and such in the area are all really trashy places where you can get tattoed and buy bikinis, and the restaurants all look pretty fishy, in more ways than one.  I remember thinking the same thing of Galveston last time I was there; in fact, the towns look remarkably alike.  We ate lunch at a Burger King where apparently "no shirt, no shoes, no service" had never been heard of.  Then again, being right on the beach, that's not terribly surprising.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">However, one big difference between Daytona Beach and Galveston was the beach itself.  Galveston suffers from having all the silt effluvia from the Mississippi river still in the current, so the water is full of suspended silt, jellyfish, seaweed, and all kinds of other crap.  The water at Daytona Beach itself was crystal clear and very beautiful.  We were right outside the hotel, so the beach wasn't too crowded in our area either; in fact, we stayed until we were almost the last folks on the beach for a few hundred yards in either direction.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The waves were much smaller than I anticipated.  I guess I hadn't really been to any Atlantic coast beaches, but based on the contrast between Pacific waves and Gulf of Mexico waves, I was surprised to see that the scale of the waves was much more like the Gulf of Mexico.  Julie didn't, but I spent a fair amount of time just passed the sandbar enjoying the waves; having them break right on me and all that.  Of course, it turns out that we got there near high tide; that sandbar was simply "the beach" a few hours later.</li> </ul>We were out for pretty much the entire afternoon.  Luckily, neither of us got sunburned.  We're not exactly rabid anti-sunburners (although, naturally, we don't enjoy being sunburned) so we only applied some spf 30 stuff once before going out, but a combination of that, plus the waning daylight seemed to keep us OK.  Julie got a little more sun than I did, and did have some minor burning, and I sunburned the tops of my feet, which I didn't think to protect.  All in all, though, we did pretty well.  Although Julie and I are both relatively white, I do have a great grandfather who is Portuguese, and apparently the only thing I inheritated from him is a slightly olive skin tone and the ability to tan without burning.  Our kids seem also to have all picked that up from me; every summer they look like surfers with dark tans and very blond hair, but Julie makes sure that they don't burn.  The cruel irony to all this is that Julie probably would rather tan than me, but is not as able to do so as easily, while I don't really care all that much.We went back into town a bit, past the racetrack to have dinner at Outback.  We weren't really feeling adventurous in terms of dinner.  All in all, not much happened, but that's exactly how we wanted it.</blockquote>

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