Just watching the sea

Ted. You may think that Judy and I are busy with adventures every day. The fact is that most of our time is taken up with the same mundane activities regardless of where in the world we happen to be living. Most of our waking hours are spent cooking, cleaning, exercising, reading, shopping for groceries, texting, emailing and playing games. 

For the first time, in my recollection, we are living in a place with a sea view so I have a new activity; watching the sea. With four large windows we can watch the sea from every room (yep – even the bathroom!). 

Our living room window

It turns out that our local sea is technically the Alboran Sea, which is one of 15 marginal seas that make up the Mediterranean (visit Wikipedia if that sounds confusing). 

Take a look at this map. Our apartment is the blue dot in the upper right hand corner. The beach is about 600 feet south of us as the seagull flies. The center of town is about a mile west of us and the airport (see the blue circle with the plane in it?) is about 6 miles southwest of us. 

Sunrise - out our window to the left

Sunset out our window to the right

We can watch all of the ships visiting the port. I have found a website called marinevesseltraffic.com, which shows the exact location of every ship in the world, along with a detailed description. Along our coast I see tankers, container ships, ferries, more specialized vessels and cruise ships. I love being able to tell Judy the name of the ship anchored off shore. Today it’s a container ship called the Alana (she’s thrilled!). 

We can also see the planes as they approach the airport from the sea. Thanks to buddy, Walt, I have an app called Flightradar24 and can simply point my phone at a plane on the horizon to see what it is (Judy - that one is an Easy Jet from Birmingham, UK! Was that a snicker?)  There are lots of local pleasure craft, sailboats and fishing boats. There must be a rowing club here because a group racing shells comes by every afternoon. 

And then there’s the water itself. It's different every hour. The color changes from aqua blue to steel grey. One day it’s a millpond and the paddleboards come out. The next day, there are five foot waves pounding the shore. 

Heavy surf pounding the jetty

I just can’t stop watching the sea. And with all of the horrors underway in Ukraine right now, watching the sea is probably the healthiest thing I can do.