Place de la République, Prades

First, thanks for all the love for my sunflower yesterday. I was pleased with the photo, but didn't expect to get such a reaction --it's become my second most favourited blip.

I'm really lame at taking photos at blipmeets. I get too distracted by talking to people, and forget to take photos. None of my photos from today have people in them, so here's an unusual half-timbered building in Prades. TickyTocky, Mrs TickyTocky, and Bundle met up at the nearby Café de la Paix. We'd have liked to see LoJardinier as well, but unfortunately he couldn't make it ... next time. And we all thought and spoke of Chaiselongue, who had been present at our previous two blipmeets.

After a drink at the cafe, we headed for a restaurant carefully researched by TickyTocky and Bundle, le Galie. Good choice: despite the unprepossessing appearance of the modern interior, we had a delicious and very good value lunch, described by TickyTocky in his entry. TickyTocky then headed off to pick up some family members from the airport, while Bundle and I strolled around Prades taking photos (including my spare blip), before we all met up at the church for the final concert of the Pablo Casals festival, given by the most outstanding students.

This church has the most ghastly baroque reredos (altar back) I've ever seen -- TickyTocky said that no-one he's ever shown it to has a good word to say for it. In fact the whole church drips with kitsch decoration.

The concert showcased some very talented young musicians, even if not all the music was to my taste. It's probably inevitable that a festival celebrating a cellist places the emphasis on strings -- most groups of students were string and piano trios or quartets -- but I'd have liked to hear more wind instruments. I love the sound of the bassoon, but the one bassoon piece was somewhat ... challenging, shall we say, for the listener. We all thought the star of the show was violinist Suichi Okada, who is only 18 and played a fiendishly difficult and showy piece by Saint-Saens with great verve, earning a very enthusiastic ovation.

A lovely day out, let's hope we can do it again!