On Tuesday, July 14, Monica and I went to the beach with my grandparents. They just sold their beach house in Ballenita that my mom, aunts, uncle, siblings, cousins, and I grew up going to. It’s an old house that had a lot of stairs and needed a lot of maintenance. The stairs were getting harder for my grandparents to manage. When their neighbor made an offer on the house, they made the hard decision to sell, and they bought an apartment in Puerto Lucía. While the apartment isn’t a house on the beach that’s filled with years of memories, it has an amazing view, a pool, and it’s much better for my grandparents. As my grandma said while we were there, we need to start creating memories in the new apartment so it starts to feel like home. That’s what we did in the following days.

We started out every morning at the pool. My grandparents walked in it and I did my knee exercises. Then we spent a few minutes in the hot tub before going back upstairs. I spent a lot of the days on the balcony, reading. It was glorious. On Wednesday evening, my grandparents and I went to the beach while Monica worked. It had been 5 years since my grandpa had touched the sand and the ocean. He couldn’t get to the beach at the old house because of all the stairs.

On Thursday afternoon, we took Monica to the Chocolatera. She thought we were taking her to a chocolate factory or store because of the name and was confused when we arrived and she didn’t see any chocolate. The Chocolatera is a rocky area where the currents make the ocean look like chocolate churning in a pot. Unfortunately, the current wasn’t very strong that day, so it didn’t look like swirling chocolate, but it’s still a beautiful area. Then we went to the Lobería, an area where you can see sea lions.

After the Lobería, we went to say goodbye to the old beach house. The neighbors who bought it know how special the house is to us and let us go see it. The best part of the house is the view from the upstairs bathroom. My sister even has that window and the view tatooed on her arm. We walked around the house and took pictures. It was sad, but I’m glad I got to see it one last time. Later, I found pictures from the first time I was there as a 3 month old. I wish I had found it earlier so my grandma and I could have recreated it at the house.

On Friday, the wedding festivities for my friend Joti’s wedding began and that’ll be in the next blog post.