Beaches:
Our Personal Top Ten

Oceans or lakes?

Our family always chooses ocean beaches!

For as long as I can remember, my Mom and Dad have had a passion for the sea. They've traveled long and far and walked on many sandy, sunny shores, across all the world's time zones.

I guess when you travel as much as my parents did, you accumulate a list of favorite beaches. Well, I guessed wrong. Recently, I asked them what their Top 10 World Beaches were.

Blank stares turned into "fun challenge!"

What are your favorite beaches worldwide? Click here to share your favorites!

"Let's boil all those beaches, our tons of beach photos, right down to our personal all-time favorites."

"Fun challenge," indeed when you live in sun-and-warmth-starved Montreal at the end of December! We asked ourselves, if we had to pick just ten beaches to revisit, which ones would they be?

Here's what we came up with (no particular order, that was impossible)...

Copacabana Beach, Brazil

Copacabana Beach is one of the world's truly great beaches...

Exciting.

Jammed.

Thongs.

My Dad says people are born, raised, get married, have children and do business on the beach. Rio lives on its beaches.

Of course, this is all coming from secondary sources (A.K.A. my parents!). My memories of this beach are a little hazy. As you can see in the photo, I was only a year old!

(My Mom made a condition for "beaches eligibility." In order to be eligible to make our Top 10, we had to have a photo of either Yuki or me on the beach.)

Vancouver, Canada

So you like to ski and swim?

You'll like Vancouver's beaches even more than we do. Vancouver's beaches are minutes out of the city, within an hour of ski resorts.

Only Yuki skis, though. And she wasn't around yet -- that's me at the age of 18 months. So what do my Mom and Dad love about Vancouver's beaches?

The photo above says it all.

It was shot in a way that highlights the beach's best attributes... Miles of soft sand that meets the cool blue ocean that leads to Vancouver's picture-perfect cityscape in the near distance, the magnificent Rockies set behind it.

Waikiki Beach, Hawaii

Hawaii is one of those places that puts an image in your mind the moment you hear the name.

The picture most people dream up, is this beach, Waikiki Beach...

Another city beach, we've walked up and down both Waikiki and downtown Honolulu countless times. My only memory is playing "great white shark" in the ocean -- we always won, of course.

I sure do want to go back "for the first time"...

Rows and rows of dark, green, lush palm trees, combined with the fresh, cool blue of the Pacific makes the perfect recipe for a tropical vacation.

What I do question however, are the crowds. We've been visiting Anguilla for a good number of years now and I take the people-free beaches for granted. I forgot that at most beaches you have to share.

However, my parents insist that it's merely a different kind of beach fun. There's only one way to tell for sure!

Venice Beach, California

Venice Beach is the funkiest beach in the world.

The vendors, street-performers, spandex'd rollerbladers and vibrant buildings make Venice Beach the colorful place it is.

Although I was only a few years old in the photo above, I remember this beach well. We returned to Southern California when I was 12, and rented and rode bikes along that coast.

The people watching is fantastic, it's one big show! This beach provides more of a spectacle than a slow-paced, lazy beach day.

Although Venice Beach doesn't provide the pleasures of Anguilla beaches, I would jump at an opportunity to return to the madness. For a day or two.

Nice, France

I only ever remember visiting one Mediterranean beach, and unfortunately it's not the one above. But my parents sure were enjoying this "best beaches" game.

The beach I remember is Viareggio in Italy, at a slightly older age...

That beach was certainly unlike any beach I had ever remembered seeing.

Unlike Anguilla beaches, Viareggio was packed - and we went on a weekday, in July (before the Italians take their holiday at the beach).

It was wall-to-wall umbrellas and beach chairs - there was hardly any room to walk along the shore!

After experiencing this Mediterranean beach I asked my Dad, "are all the beaches in the south of Europe like this?"

"The beaches in the south of France have their fair share of private cafés, too. There is more breathing room, but it's still packed compared to Anguilla. "

Daytona, Florida

The Spring Break Beach.

Daytona Beach is one of the most popular beaches with college kids for one reason: it's wide, firm shores. You can drive and park your car right on the sand!

When I visited, however, I was not in college. I was but seven years old and on my way home from Disney World.

Daytona Beach was once the most famous beach in the world, but meeting Minnie Mouse was the highlight of that trip! I'll have to return and absorb Daytona's schtick, without the cartoon-character excitement.

Cuyutalan, Mexico

When I was seven years old, my Mom and Dad took my sister and I to Mexico for 5 weeks. We stayed one week in Mexico City and four in Guadalajara.

Mexico is dry - not many lakes, streams or creeks. But there are two large oceans on either side of this long, thin country.

Naturally, we decided to venture out of Guadalajara and head to the beach. Cuyutalan is a Mexican resort, not really for "foreigners." I vaguely remember the experience... drinking out of coconuts, everyone smiling at us.

And then there was my sister and I splashing in the water... until a sea creature swam up to us to say hello. It was a stingray! I jumped out of the water so fast my sister's head spun.

"Stingray!" I yelled to my parents.

"Yeah, sure Nori, that's nice."

Finally, my Dad came to see. "Stingray," he yelled.

Outer Banks, North Carolina

For a few years, the Outer Banks, North Carolina was a regular visiting place. The last time there, I was about six years old and jealous of everyone around me.

So many people were hang-gliding... off the dunes and out and over the Atlantic! Nothing seemed so liberating and exciting as that. Unfortunately, I was only six years old and couldn't handle those massive kites on my own.

Although I'm no thrill seeker, to this day I want to feed that six year old in me, and hang-glide. Naturally, it'd have to be done in North Carolina, the state that introduced me to it!

Provincetown, Cape Cod

I. Love. New England.