> > After lunch we went to the beach!!! I saw the ocean for the first time in my life!
>
> You have no idea how hard this is to believe. Even though I *know* you live in a big wide country, I find it almost impossible to imagine that *anyone* could drive for even a day and still not reach a coast; heck, we have an endurance event here where people RUN from the West Coast to the East Coast in one day. And that's at the wide bit of the country; up here where it's narrow, I've walked from one side to the other in five hours. Hearing someone say they've never seen the ocean gives me the same reaction as if someone said they've never seen the sky. Wow. I wish I could visit where you come from, and see if inland is as weird to me as visiting a beach is to you.

Strangly, I'm now landlocked for the first time in my life. Even whin I was in America, it was always on a coast (California and New Orleans).

Actually, all of my previous holidays have been to one coast or another, except for when I went to Paris, and that's only a few hours drive from the Channel.

But I doubt you'd find inland weird; I mean there must be places you've been where you couldn't see, smell or hear the ocean.

winter"Happy tourist"mute