Why I love Conil

So here we are in our cosy apartmnet in Conil de la Frontera. What do we do all day long you ask? The answer is, about the same things we do at home. As at home there is shopping and cooking and eating, photography and time at the computer, and walking. Here we are also busy discovering our surroundings. As at home, some days I sleep well, some days I don't. Some days I'm full of energy and on top of things, some days I'm not. Same as at home. But some things are different.

We were in Conil three years ago. On our way home from Portugal in our camper van, we stopped in Conil for two weeks, mainly because friends were also here and we enjoyed their company. We saw enough of Conil to know that we liked it. However, staying at the camping grounds on the outskirts of the town, we never got a feeling for the town itself and were on the beach only a few times. We were living in Campervanland, not Conil. This time it's different.

The most obvious reason I like it this time around better is that we are in town and three minutes from the beach. Almost everything seems to be within walking distance. I have miles and miles of walking opportunities. I can cross the Rio Salado on the one side of Conil  and walk to the 16th Century defense tower down the coast,  I can walk along the beach in the other direction to little restaurants for a glass of wine or until the beach stops at the foot of the cliffs.  I can walk to the market, If we take the car a short distance, there are new paths for us to explore near the lighthouse. Although we had our bikes with us three years ago, we weren't half as active. I wasn't into walking then, either.

I say I am busy with about the same things as at home, yet it is very different. Not just because it's Spain and not Germany but because it's not city. It's being on the coast, seeing the ocean from the living room window. When I walk, it's being alone on the beach with the wind and waves. It's experiencing weather, not good weather as opposed to bad weather but sky, storm, sun, wind, the sound of the surf, the blinding reflection of the sun on the water, the change of the beach at high tide and low tide.
That is what I love most about Conil.

Perhaps it's more than Conil.