After a busy day yesterday we had a slow start to today with a wander around Girona before heading off to the coast for the concert that Mat was taking part in. The guitar group that Mat is in, Berkshire Youth Guitar Orchestra (BYGO), consists of about 30 young guitarists playing a selection of mainly classical pieces. Therefore it was a surprise that the concert was being held in Lloret de Mar which, as we drove through it, resembled a scene from the Inbeteweeners movie. The streets were lined with the sort of establishments that you would find at a typical British seaside resort and on the beach were many Europeans being baked to a crisp.
If the above didn’t give you a picture of Lloret de Mar then the following should. Lloret de Mar is on the Costa Brava and on the coastal road into the town at set intervals were young women dressed in very little, leaving nothing to the imagination. I would say that these were women of the night but given that this was late afternoon I am not sure that epithet applies. How I am sure that they were prostitutes? I’m not. It’s not as if I pulled up next to one and got Helen to wind down the window to ask. I suppose that they could all have been waiting for the bus into town and if so then that’s one bus route I wouldn’t have minded driving but, no, I am pretty certain. I drove past with a mixture of open mouthed fascination and sadness that it was going on in such a brazen fashion. In all there must have been about a dozen on the stretch that we drove along (quickly, not curb crawling) so there is clearly a market.
With this as a backdrop it was quite a surprise to find such a beautiful church (see below) in amongst all this but there it was the venue for tonights concert.
The concert itself consisted of three groups from a local guitar school followed by BYGO who played the most pieces I think that I have ever heard them play. I have some recording of the concert which I will upload once I get back home but suffice to say we were very proud of Mat when he got up to play his guitar solo during BYGO’s rendition of Santana’s Smooth. There was also a touch of sadness for us as this is the last time that we will get to see Mat play as he leaves the group in the summer.
After the concert Mat went off with the rest of the group and we won’t see him again until he returns to the UK next week. We, meanwhile, have our own packed itinerary which continues tomorrow.
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