Last year, our trip was all about discoveries: of a country, of the delights of ocean waves chasing a boy on the beach, of the pleasures and challenges that define a vacation.

This year was about going back for seconds, testing solid theories, deepening the research. What we had won at the weather casino last year, we lost this time around. Now we know what it’s like to need gloves during a shoulder-season beach holiday. Good thing we brought them along.

Another difference: the Fuji camera isn’t so new anymore, plus I decided to experiment with a different lens: not the 23mm f/1.4 with the thirty-five optics, but the 56mm f/1.2, the Fujinon equivalent to a classic eighty-five. I was curious how this heftier lens, with its considerably narrower field of view, would perform in family-vacation conditions, and how different a story it would tell. Hence the layout below, a copy of last year’s. Of course we can’t separate cause from coincidence: the lens was different, but so was the weather, so were our accommodations, so was the fact that I was busy knitting this year, or that by now I speak a little Portuguese.

The one of me is by Anker, the rest are mine. As you’ll discover by clicking, most photos are landscapes, but, like last year, I’ve cropped the thumbnails down to portrait proportions. I admit that I think last year’s pictures were better, though I can’t quite wrap my head around why.