Erik's Blog

On the way back from Bordeaux, we spent Monday, my thirty-first birthday, in St. Jean de Luz, in southern France. In fact, St. Jean de Luz is part of the French Basque Country. It was strange for us, regular visitors to the Spanish Basque Country, to see the Basque flag and hear French being spoken. The truth is, however, we heard very little French spoken. Since October 12th is Spain’s National Day, the entire town was crawling with Spaniards on holiday. St. Jean de Luz’s primary attraction is its semi-circular beach. Originally a fishing villiage, it became a popular destination for wealthy Brits in the nineteenth century and now has a thriving tourism industry.

The day was a considerable letdown for us. Not only was the weather a little drizzly, but we had just been to the beautiful medieval Saint Émilion the day before, and St. Jean de Luz was quite lackluster in comparison. Also, we live in a fishing village right next to a beach a hundred times better than that of St. Jean de Luz, so why would we want to spend a day in a similar town filled with Spaniards when we could be at home doing the same thing? We had lunch, went to the tourism office, realized there weren’t any sights we wanted to see, and headed home.
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If you’re ever curious what the weather is (or was) like here, there’s a solution! I recently discovered a very well done 360° webcam in nearby Laredo. You can download 7330×900 high resolution photos from every quarter hour of daylight going back to November 3, 2007. It will also generate timelapse videos, but 15 minutes is too long of an interval to make an interesting timelapse video.
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My parents came for a visit this past week. As always, I tried to show them a good Spanish time with lots of good food, good wine, and good weather. The first day they were here the weather was pretty bad, but eventually we got to go out around Colindres and Laredo. Here are a few photographs.
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On Tuesday of this past week, we went to a free concert on Laredo’s beach. The main act was El Arrebato. The name of the band means ecstasy or rapture. Indeed.

The opening act was a band called Mario San Miguel. The lead singer was quite entertaining, making jokes, etc. They did this elaborate setup for the first song, with the backs of the guitarist, bassist, and singer to the audience, with each turning around with style, but then the audience informed them that the sound wasn’t on for the vocalist and guitar, so they had to do it all over again. They told us, "Okay, please forget what you just saw. We’re going to do it right this time!" While they seemed a little amateur like this, they were very friendly and lovable. I’ve already attempted to find some of their music online, but with no luck so far.

The main act, headed by a character named Javier Labandón, is absolutely amazing. They might be my Spanish favorite band, with the possible exception of the Gipsy Kings (who a friend, Nystrom, offered to go see with me one time in the US, and I didn’t go because I had never heard of them). This is the third time I have seen El Arrebato in concert. The first time was in Extremadura, when I had never heard of them. And the second time was near home in Cantabria two years ago, which I blogged. The lead singer is absolutely amazing. As they say here, llena el escenario (he fills the stage). Being an entertaining singer without an instrument is hard work, but this guy has so much charisma, it’s unbelievable.
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I have not yet lost my newfound fascination for tilt shifting. I’ve been searching through my photos for more candidates as well as looking for Flickr photos with Creative Commons licenses (that means you’re legally allowed to modify and republish as long as you cite the original source) to play around with. Here are the results of my recent efforts.
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We spent this past weekend in an intensive salsa dancing seminar in the picturesque Cantabrian town of Suances. The invited instructors were mostly from a Milan-based dance troupe called Tropical Gem. My videos of the dance steps we learned are not unlike the ones I took last year, so I won’t post them. The weather was spectacular, so on Saturday we took a little stroll on the beach.
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Like Aruba, Curaçao is Dutch, and the population speaks four languages. We went with our internet-informed friends onto shore and quickly found a taxi driver, Franklin A. Concepcion, who wanted to take us to a few notable places. We negotiated him down from $20/person to $25/couple and off we rode.
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I took advantage of the crystal clear blue skies today to take some panorama shots of Laredo. I kind of surprised myself by finding such a great vantage point.
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The in-laws came to visit this weekend, and we went to Santander. The mission? To buy a suit for the second most important man at my wedding, the father of the bride. He ended up buying it in the same place where I bought my suit.
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Today, Marga’s parents, Marga, and I walked the entire length Laredo’s beach. In the morning, we walked from where we usually park to the very tip of the Laredo’s sandy peninsula and back again. And then, after lunch, we parked in the same place and walked in the other direction until the end. The section of beach that we walked measures 5 kilometers, so we walked 10 km in total, just like the race yesterday.
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