Could you ever live at the beach, or do you just feel it's a place to visit?

I have only ever been to six beaches in my entire life, but that is more than enough for me to have learned that every beach is different.  Ocean City, for instance, I would not like to visit or live near, because it is too crowded and commercialized.  The two beaches I have visited in Michigan were either too cold or too full of trash to enjoy, despite their isolation.  The beach at a lake in Utah that I visited when I was seven doesn’t count as a “real” beach to me, because it was on a lake and not on the coast of an ocean or sea.  Even so, it was too crowded for my taste anyway.  Miami beach is a fine place to visit, but the large city so close by and the high price of living in that area would prevent me from wanting to live there.

Would I ever want to live at a beach?  If the circumstances—and the beach, of course—were just right, then I absolutely would love to live at a beach.  I even have the perfect beach in mind: Waihi Beach, on the eastern shore of the northern island in New Zealand.  If I could either make more than one trip back to the States to visit family and friends every five to ten years or find some way for all of them to be there with me, I would absolutely live at Waihi Beach, particularly at one of the more southern stretches, where there aren’t as many people who go there even in the summer months.  I would like to live a mile or two just south of the town of Waihi Beach itself, within a block or two of the water’s edge.

Why Waihi?  Well, the water is clear and a perfect temperature in the summertime, the people are very friendly, and it doesn’t get too cold in the winter.  Also, in the few places I have travelled outside Maryland, Waihi was the only place I have really been able to feel comfortable enough to talk to and make friends with perfect strangers.  On our honeymoon, my husband and I stayed at a small bed and breakfast in Waihi run by an older couple.  They were the nicest people I’ve ever met, and I would gladly move to Waihi Beach (as long as I could still be near family, of course) in order to be able to call Greg and Ali neighbors.