Weekend 11: Shirahama Beach

For one of our last weekends we decided to take the girls back to the beach.  But, this time a beach with beautiful clear blue water...and one that was 3 hours away.

We got up and left the apartment at 6:30 a.m. (so we could make the 8 a.m. train that connected about 20 minutes away).  It was 6:45 a.m. when I looked at my watch and noticed that the air was so humid that when you rubbed your hands together they felt wet - at 6:45 a.m.!

We walked to Osaka City Station, rode to the Tennoji Station (by subway) and then bought tickets for the 2 1/2 hour train ride to Shirahama.  The picture of Grace to the left is how she waited for the train to arrive.  We knew Sarah was going to love riding the train for this long! 

After we arrived at the Shirahama train station we then got on a bus for a 10-15 minute ride to the beach (that's three modes of transportation Sarah has ridden on today!  She is so happy!)  Here we are on the bus:

Here are pictures of the beautiful (and very busy) beach:

While the beach WAS busy, we easily found a place to put our stuff down, spread out our blankets and really did not feel like we were right on top of the people next to us.

For days now Sarah has talked about how much she loved the floaties Daddy bought her so we didn't have to hold her in the water.

For some reason the girls made it a game to collect seaweed and put it in the sand castle bucket.  It was mostly Sarah on this mission, but they both took part in it.  For some reason I only got a picture of Grace with the seaweed.

And, of course, Grace made a friend.  And although they couldn't actually speak to one another, that doesn't mean they couldn't communicate and have fun together!

Somehow we left the beach without a family photo.  But, we did leave with a little sunburn and lots of great memories.



In the taxi

P.S.  Here is a funny story.  A couple of weeks ago the girls and I were talking about how Daddy takes a train and then a taxi to work every day.  (Now the funny-ness of the story is in how fast Sarah turned her neck around at that comment).  After she heard what I said, she snapped her neck around to me and said, "IIIII haven't ridden in a taxi."  It was a moment where she realized there was yet another mode of transportation...and she hadn't tried it out yet!!!  I told Jim the story and we had been laughing about it for a couple weeks.

So, on the way home from the beach, we were trying to figure out when the bus was coming we could take to get back to the train station - and also worried we may miss the train (the long one) and then would have to wait 2 hours for the next one, we saw a taxi.  Soooo, Sarah is now able to say she has also ridden in a taxi!