My GF had some airline miles and decided at the last minute to book us a trip to Barcelona. The whole east side of the city has a few miles of (man made) beaches, and there are many nicer beaches that extend north all the way to the French border.
We’ve been out three mornings in a row so far (by 11am it’s too hot for us): once to Barceloneta (crowded, a bit grubby tbh, and beset by thieves who will steal all your stuff while you’re swimming – no joke), and twice to Platja d’Ocata, about 25 minutes north by commuter train. Platja d’Ocata is a super nice “town beach”, for sure.
For women from teenage to 50+, at least 3/4 are wearing thongs. About 1/3 of the women from 20+ to 60-ish are topless as well. Guys in board shorts, 95%; guys in swim briefs, 4.98%; one naked guy (not me); one guy in a thong (me in a Skinz M67). That being said, nobody seems to care, as far as I can tell. One woman commented that she liked my suit as she was leaving.
Background: My GF doesn’t like guys in thongs. She’s worn them for years and goes topless wherever it’s not expressly forbidden. But guys in thongs? Not her thing, a bridge too far. Which makes the rest of this story especially funny to me, kind of the ultimate “Cambridge Guy’s rule” test.
We were heading back to the showers, both wearing just thongs. I wanted to rinse off, put on boardies, then go to the chiringuito by the showers to get a cold drink, but she says, “no, let’s get a drink first”. So she walks to a shaded table on the sand in nothing but her thong bottom, sits down and asks, “you coming?” Um, ok, so I go grab a seat at the table. She says, “Hmm, I think you should go order at the bar”, so I go up to the bar wearing just my thong and the waitress doesn’t blink and eye and says “I’ll bring you a menu”. Which she does, so we order and have our drinks, and my still topless GF tries to flag down the waitress with no luck and says “Why don’t you pay up at the bar”, so I walk past 10 other tables wearing just a thong to pay the bill, and nobody blinks an eye. Then we both walked past everybody in the place to the showers, rinsed off and headed to the train.
For someone who doesn’t like guys in thongs, she sure seemed to be putting me to the test.