City Beaches

If you are visiting large cities this summer but want to take a break from business or sight-seeing, a surprising number of them have beaches, sometimes right downtown. Not all of these beaches have sand or allow swimming, but some do.

Among the cities with relatively recent concrete beaches are Berlin, Paris and Montreal. These are places where you can catch some rays in a swimming suit in the midst of town. Other places, inclouding some in cold climates, have more appealing sandy beaches.

For instance, Chicago's Montrose Beach is a nice place to walk or lie in the sun. In a suburb of Amsterdam called Ijburg, Blijburg aan Zee is a sandy public beach. In Cape Town, which boasts water cold enough for penguins, Clifton Beach attracts a lot of visitors in their summer, and so does Playa Pocitos in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Even New York City has a public beach at Rockaway, and Toronto has both the district known as the Beaches to the east of downtown and the beaches on the city's islands in Lake Erie. Many places have nearby beaches, such as those on the lakes around Berlin including the Wannsee. This is a large lake with a lot of nice places to relax, and transport there is included on many city transit passes.

Wherever you are headed, do an internet search on beaches and the name of the city, and you may be in for a pleasant surprise.