Wow!

The power of the sea is awesome.

After the storms of the previous night, the Mediterranean was churning and heaving like I’ve never seen before. Waves were reported to top out at 4 meters (12 feet), but I’m positive they were higher. The swells were both exciting and frightening to see. In the back of my head I kept humming the music to Hawaii 5-O, and thought we’d see some brave souls head out on surf boards – but we didn’t. That’s most likely because the police (or someone) came and blocked off access to the water in order to keep people back from the shore. At one point, the waves were cresting OVER the costal road between the west end of the village and the Italian border – so they even closed the road to Italy! We watched the fury for some time and snapped some photos and videos. The extra wide angle of the lens didn’t allow me to catch the true magnitude of the waves (at one point, they crashed in over the top of the lighthouse). Everyone in town came out to see though (kind of like a car accident), so I knew we were getting a good show (for free!)!

As we went for our afternoon promenade, I spotted a vintage Citroën parked at the side of the road. It seemed to be in good shape. You don’t see them much any more, so I snapped a photo for posterity’s sake.

The white apartment building that I’ve photographed is the apartment building that our unit is in this year. Our particular unit doesn’t face south, over the sea (it actually faces east, into a very pleasant court yard, with a view up the mountains), but if you look south from one of the patios, we have more than a glimpse of the sea. We have the pool with our unit (see posting #1), so the view from the actual unit isn’t all that important to us.

My newest ponderence on the European psyche is about electricity. The clothes washers here primarily ONLY use cold water for washing (there isn’t even a hot water hook up), next to nobody has a clothes dryer, and dish-washers do not have a drying (or power drying) cycle – all because they “waste” electricity. However, all the trains that criss-cross the continent run on electricity.

Hmmmm…..