Art form

Another glorious day; we strolled along the sea front for lunch at the Balcon de Cotobro, one of our favourites. As usual we shared a single starter and main course between us; first, firm favourite tandoori chicken salad, a kind of souped up Caesar salad, and this fabulous main course: perfectly cooked bacalao with fresh and sun-dried tomatoes, asparagus tips, a squid ink crisp, and a perfectly poached runny egg. So delicious we could have eaten one serving each. Desserts less impressive but that's pretty much always the case in Spanish restaurants.

Yesterday evening I went with S and T to the final session of the second round in the guitar competition. Four guitarists again, one of them the Ukrainian S and I had seen previously. There was also a very flashy 21-year old Russian in a glamorous sparkly dress, and a Romanian, Mircea Gogoncea, who even I could see was a cut above. S and T know more about guitars than I do and they were impressed with him, dismissing the young Russian as showy but playing less demanding pieces. Anyway, three out of four of them (including her) made it through to tonight's final, which made S and T less disappointed that it was sold out. In any case it involves four finalists one after the other playing the same piece with an  orchestra, so would be less interesting. I'd go to the preliminaries again; they're interesting, and free.

Afterwards we met my S in our favourite bar (now S and T's local) Los Pajaritos. It was buzzing; we stayed much longer than intended, long enough to actually get seats after an hour or so, and lost count of the dazzling array of fried fish tapas we were served. We must have had a lot of rounds, because at the end of the night we scored a plate of swordfish a la plancha, a tapa I can't recall getting to before. Lovely convivial evening.