Description of rivers, bays, and gulfs with examples and personal memories

What is my favorite place?

The edge of a river, where it meets the land is called the bank or the riverbank.

My favorite place in the whole city is Gorky Park. It's located just south of the art museum, on the bank of the river. I love sitting in the park and looking out over the river.
I grew up far away from the sea, but we still went to the beach every weekend in the summer. We just went to a rocky, open area on the riverbank and swam in the river. We called that our city beach.

Definitions of riverside

Another word for the bank of the river is the riverside. This is where the waters of the river and the land meet.

She said she was going to go down by the riverside and take a swim. You might want to go down to the river and see if she's there.

We didn't have a basement in my house because it was built on a riverside. If you dug too deep into the ground, you would find water, because the river was so close.

The bay and its characteristics

A bay is a body of water that is an inlet from a larger body of water, for instance, an ocean or a big lake, which often has smaller waves and less winds. It is usually surrounded on three sides by land. For example, the Bay of Bengal on the east coast of India or the Bay of Biscay between France and Spain.

My mum told me to go look for asparagus down by the bay. It grows well in the sea air, according to her.

Tanya prefers to go fishing in the bay because there are fewer waves and the water is generally quieter, but there are still plenty of fish.

A very large bay may also be called a gulf, for example the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of Finland.

Holidays on the Gulf Coast

This year we are going to the Gulf Coast of America for our holidays. I prefer it to the Atlantic Coast, actually, where we went last year. On the Atlantic, the sand is rough and brown and the water is cold and rough. But on the gulf, the sand is fine and white, the water is always warm and the waves are soft. It's very pleasant for swimming.
The Exxon spill off the coast of Louisiana was one of the biggest oil spills in the world, and certainly the biggest in the Gulf of Mexico. Beaches all along the Gulf Coast were damaged.