Leaves in the park.

The solar photons with longer wavelengths add a romance to sunset photography.

A stone path.

A flowery gate.

A cow posing for a silhouette.

A country path leading into the town of Colindres.

Striped flower pot.

Some gorgeously colored flowers…or are they leaves?

A long gate.

The pattern on the ground from the gate in the previous photo.

Cinderblocks.

Sunshine on tree bark, with a distant horse.

Three horses.

A lone flower.

Two old houses, one in the foreground and one in the background.

Time to head back into town, past Nora’s daycare and the town church.

Watching them was mesmerizing. They were flying the entire two hours we were at the beach.

I love discovering new ways that humans can be creative and passionate about something. Of course I knew as soon as I stopped recording that there would be tons of videos on YouTube of synchronized kites, and sure enough, there are.

Cool, huh?

This morning, when Nora and I were on our daily outing to buy fresh bread, she asked me where we were going, and I said we were going to Lupa, the local supermarket that has a bakery open on Sunday. She then asked, “Why?” I returned the question to her to see if she knew why, and she said, “To buy bread.” Quickly, I asked her the same thing in Spanish, “¿Por qué vamos a Lupa?” Without missing a beat, she responded, in Spanish, “Para comprar el pan.” Amazed, I got out my iPhone to try to recreate the moment on tape, which didn’t turn out quite as perfect as the original moment (does it ever?), but I thought it worth including.

Does it show that I’m proud of her bilingualism? Probably not…

Close-captioned in Spanglish, in case it’s hard to understand.

I was the only one that got sunburned.

What I love about the beach in Laredo is that it’s so ginormous, that even on crowded summer days, you’re never less than five meters from anyone else’s “campsite”.

The truth is that we didn’t last very long on the towel, opting for rolling around directly in the sand for the majority of our visit.

She refused any sort of hair management strategies, opting for the tousled surfer look.

Luckily Mommy came to clean the sand out of her eyes.

The local fishmonger was as full as I’ve ever seen it on Christmas Eve morning. Shellfish is a major holiday staple across Spain. The lobsters, tagged as having come from Canada, were still sluggishly moving about on the ice.

Langostinos a la plancha = grilled jumbo shrimp

Eggs stuffed with crab meat.

Gilda = 1 hot pepper + 1 anchovy + 1 olive. They are named after the 1946 Rita Hayworth film because their shape resembles her hourglass figure. If there was ever a word coined by an inebriated man at a bar, this is it.

Mmmm.. Flan!

After the meal, I helped polish off a bottle of Wild Turkey that my parents gave my grandfather-in-law a few years back. Among the bottles that get taken out every year is a bottle of patxaran from 1993.

We had only light flurries of snow on Christmas day, but the mountains around us were covered. This is Udalaitz, the largest mountain overlooking the town of Mondragón.

Nora enjoyed a ride on a carousel set up in town for the holidays. This time she was in a Ferarri. I was there with her and very nearly got dizzy.

We sang traditional Spanish Christmas carols. Since I only ever hear them one night a year, and the lyrics vary from family to family (and thus cannot be found on the internet), I have yet to learn the lyrics, except to the most repetitive songs. The bizarre percussion instrument is called a zambomba, or friction drum, and must be played with a wet hand, which vibrates on a cane shaft and is magnified by a drum head. Nora had a delightful time with all the music.

There are several reasons why I am in favor of this festival as a general local citizen. It gets people out into local establishments, spending money and applying social lubricant, it provides a stage for local restaurateurs to showcase their craft, and it generally makes for a more contented populous. Triple win!

Here’s the PDF of the brochure.

I’ll present the tapas in the order that I consumed them.

La Abadía – To Harrow: puff pastry, respigos, cod, tomato confit, cured ham salt, and parsley oil.

I was very concerned that we might have had the best one first.

La Atalaya – Christmas Seafood Salad: Monkfish, shrimp, tuna, egg and pink sauce.

It was good, but pretty close to a tuna salad mix I can make at home.

La Marina Company – Crunchy Cod Ravioli: Cod, cured beef, leek, wheat flour, olive oil, and paprika.

It was good, but we were still disappointed because of the good food we’ve had out of the Marina Company’s kitchen before. That, and…

The pincho they had for the competition was the least attractive thing in this big pincho display case they had on the bar. How could we not be disappointed?

Cafetería Colón – Seafood Sandwich and a Hit of Sea: fish soup, shellfish croquette and toast.

The brochure reads “ropa de pescado“, which means “seafood clothes”, but I’m pretty sure they meant “sopa de pescado“, so that it’s “seafood soup”. The soup was very good, especially with the cold weather, and they do an excellent job with croquettes at Cafetería Colón. Their kangaroo croquette was our favorite pincho last year.

La Tropicana – Foie and Goat Cheese on Toast: foie, goat cheese, and bread.

The presentation was absolutely abysmal, very unappealing to the eye. But holy cow, it’s foie and goat cheese! It was wonderfully delicious! It definitely got top marks for taste.

El Guti – Fish Meatball Bathed in Fish Velouté: hake, red sea scorpion, salmon, and shrimp sauce.

Again, the taste was better than the presentation. The chef is a friend of ours, and he told us that they weren’t given much time to sign up for the competition, so they threw in an old favorite instead of getting too creative.

Inside the fish meatball.

El Portalón – Duck a l’Orange In Old Clothes: duck, onion, tomato, tomato sauce, raisins, orange, and humus.

This was the first year for El Portalón. Being mainly a restaurant more than a bar, they are usually closed during the work week in the winter, so agreeing to be open all week long for pinchos has never really appealed to them. But then they participated in another pincho competition this past summer and won first place, so their fans forced them into participating in the winter competition.

I’m not a very big fan of anything a l’orange, but this pincho was very good. The use of a slate shingle as a plate was a clever touch.

El Somera – Skewer Of Octopus And Shrimp With Veggies: octopus, jumbo shrimp, vegetables and paprika mayonnaise.

That’s four of them in the picture because we met up with some friends. This one was very, very good; easily in the top three. The following day I turned on the television and the regional news was doing a report on this Semana del Pincho, and they specifically went into El Somera and interviewed the chef.

La Cabaña – The Tramline: toast with cheese and mushrooms.

This was the biggest discrepancy between description and quality; the pincho was much better than the description made it out to be. I was pleasantly surprised. Plus, the cheese was a strong blue cheese, which is always fun.

Dolce Vita – Skewer of Marinated Chicken: chicken, pepper and cherry tomato on a piece of toast.

This was good, but nothing special.

A cool photo of the neon bar sign reflecting in my wine while I was waiting for my pincho.

Bodegón El Faro – Basket of Chorizo With Quail Egg

This was tasty, but colder than it should’ve been served, and a lot smaller than it looks in the photo. Good idea, but mediocre execution.

El Tendal De César – Autumn To Winter: Mushroom crepe with a seaweed reduction and moscatel.

This was a very pleasant surprise. It was bigger than most of them and full of mushroomy goodness. Moscatel sounds like a telecommunications company to me, but it’s really a port wine.

El Sinfo – Gardener Roll: asparagus, crunchy bacon and piquillo sauce with a Pedro Ximenez reduction.

El Sinfo has had the worst pinchos in this competition in past years, and this wasn’t much better. Meh.

Cafetería Berna – Boletus Toast: Boletus edulis, peppers and foie.

I had no idea what Boletus edulis was, but I’ve since learned that it’s a species of wild mushroom. The presentation and taste were excellent, but by the last bite, the pâté was pretty cloying.

Cafetería Nikos – What Crisis?: scallop au gratin in lobster sauce.

The bartender told me to be careful because it might be very hot, so I waited a couple minutes and it turned out to be cold. Despite that mishap, it was very, very good. We had something similar at our wedding.

Cafetería Cartago – Foie Eclipse: foie, potato, French onion, white wine, virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and brown sugar.

The presentation was unrivaled, but the taste was only average. The potato sticks were a bit impractical to eat with a fork.

Bodega la Casona – Crepe Filled With Mushrooms and Scallops with Idiazábal Cheese: bread, mushrooms, scallops, Idiazábal cheese, cream, soft cheese, tomato, garlic and olive oil.

It took us three visits to La Casona to finally get their pincho; once they were closed and another time they had run out. But it was worth it. Boy, was it worth it! What a wonderful sensation with the scallops, mushrooms, cream and cheese all mingling in your mouth. Fantastic!

Conclusion

The competition was fierce. It is extremely hard to pick a winner…but here we go:

Best Presentation: Cafetería Cartago – Foie Eclipse

Best Overall: Bodega la Casona – Crepe Filled With Mushrooms and Scallops with Idiazábal Cheese

Going from bar to bar eating pinchos and drinking wine is probably my all time favorite activity, and it’s the part of Spanish culture I would most miss if I were ever to leave Spain.

It took me four nights to visit 17 of the 22 participating establishments, and I loved every minute of it. Is it time for next year’s competition yet?

A panorama of the Family Connections place, showing all the variety of toys for kids of various ages. Costumes, dinosaurs, a piano, finger paints, a slide, books, etc.

Nora locks her grandmother inside the playhouse.

Mommy looks like a giant peering into the “kitchen”.

There were several other Spanglish-speaking kids there. Nora bummed a juice box off of one. It was her first experience with a juice box; she got the hang of it immediately.

Oh, and they have laundry facilities too, so I guess you can do your laundry while the little tykes wear themselves out.

Nora behaves like any proud new homeowner, inviting in guests, locking in guests, trying to close the door by grabbing the outside doorknob from inside, etc.

It was bigger than my head.

That’s some big fruit.

Of course some of us had to get silly.

It was way bigger than little 9-month-old Nora’s head.

When life gives you lemons…post photos of them on your blog.

The other day, I was walking her down by the docks on a sunny cloudless day, and she looked up and said “Water!” In retrospect, I’m pretty certain that she was asking me for some water, but at the moment she said it, I thought she was associating the blue of the sky with the color of water. “No, no, I said, that’s sky.” She repeated, “Sky.” And after a second or two, she said, “Cielo,” which is the Spanish word for sky. I was blown away. Obviously she’s going to pick up some Spanish vocabulary from daycare, but understanding the generalization that is “sky” and perfectly equating it with its equivalent word in her other language is no simple feat.

Shortly after she learned the word for sky, I pointed out the moon and taught her to say “Moon!” The next day she surprised her mother when she picked out the moon in the illustrations in her bedtime story book.

Sometimes without warning, she’ll remember her first snow and begin saying “Snow! Holy cow!” And of course any snowy imagery will also set her off with that. “Oh my!”

Yesterday, when I was putting Nora’s new winter coat on her, she said, “Frio!” (cold). “Yes, that’s why we’re putting your coat on you,” I replied. “Frio!” she repeated.

Her pronunciation is still far from perfect, and often times we cannot tell what she’s saying. I find it interesting the words that she seems to think are homonyms. She says both “Dora” (the Explorer) and “koala” like “dola”. And she refers to both “Grandma” with the same sound, “mema”, that she uses for “quema” (it burns) to say that food or bathwater is too hot.

Often times when we are out for a walk, Nora will shout some word she knows, like “fante!” (short for elefante) or “doggy!” or “Minnie!”. Many times I will be unable to see the object she has so gleefully identified, but if I take the time to look, somewhere in the scene there is a picture or drawing of an elephant, dog, or Minnie (or Mickey) Mouse.

Yet another unforeseen benefit of the Apple TV that we have discovered is that the photo slideshow screensaver works very well as vocabulary flash cards. Nora will stare at it and identify people she knows in the photos. After I reset the Apple TV yesterday, it defaulted to the factory installed screensaver of wild animal pictures, many of which Nora can identify. Her two favorite animals at the moment are elephants and penguins (fante! and pinguino! to her). I think I may actually make some photo sets to teach her vocabulary in the future.

This morning, she spotted her mother’s coat and said, as clear as day, “Mommy jacket”. She hasn’t yet mastered putting more than one word together, with the exception of her favorite verbless behavioral reprimand. She can also pair objects with states, e.g. “Shoe off!”, to form commands, but I’m looking forward to her gaining subject-verb-object grammar.

Much to her father’s liking, she’s taken a shine to Looney Tunes. “Bunny!” she shouts whenever Bugs appears on the screen. She has also decided that she prefers to change seats with her baby doll and sit in her toy stroller, but only if the baby is sitting up in her chair too.

Because the images are from a 360° panorama, I cut between four shots of different parts of the panorama. It goes by really quickly, so you might want to watch it a couple times. Things to watch for:

1. In the first shot, the tide comes in, goes out, and comes back in again.
2. In the second shot, for some reason, all the boats turn around from facing left to facing right. Wind? Tides?
3. In the third shot, the parking lot fills up quickly in the morning and empties quickly in the evening.

Very worth watching in HD.