Virginia Beach (5/12/2015)

This week's travel takes me to Virginia Beach.  At least I had a chance to walk along the beach after the "Stormwater Plan Review" class that I taught.  As usual, I was exhausted from a day's worth of teaching, but it was still nice to be out there.

It was warm, with temperatures in the high 80s (30 to 31 degrees Celcius) and there were a fair number of people on the beach for a Tuesday afternoon.

Virginia Beach is a great place for a family vacation; for us it is so close but so far away.  Political leaders in the area are desperately trying to make the Hampton Roads area one community,  but the tunnels actually divides the area into the south side and the peninsula.

What amazed me during my walk on the beach was the number of people on their smartphones.  Darn, it seems that people cannot just enjoy their surroundings and the environment but have to be connected all the time.  How many times do you sit in a restaurant and a couple comes in and after being seated and ordering they ignore each other and just stare at their phone.  While phones are a god sent for us travelers  (we stay in touch with spouses and find the nice restaurants on Yelp), it seems that human relationship seems to suffer.  Even on this beautiful beach, couples were sitting on benches staring at their phones instead of looking at people, the beach and the ocean.  So close, but so far apart.

A nice change of pace was the sushi counter at my favorite sushi restaurant: Kyushu Japanese Restaurant on Newtown road.  I was sitting there with three other people and we had a wonderful discussion.   Kyushu is really my favorite and worth a try for all that like sushi.  The fish is fresh, it tastes great and good conversation.