Andorra

After we left the Dali triangle, we drove up into the Pyrennees, through France and a big tunnel into Andorra, one of the most intriguing places we visited.

Before we decided to go on this trip, I had never even heard of Andorra. It is a small principality nestled in the mountains, in between Spain and France. One of our friends here recommended it to us because it has a reputation for being a tax haven and shopping mecca. It is an odd place, I guess it was closed off to the outside world really until the 50s, and recently it has started undergoing a tourist boom. You can see why, the mountains are gorgeous, prices are cheap and it is still relatively undiscovered. People speak mostly Catalan Spanish, which makes sense since Spaniards outnumber native Andorrans, and they use the Euro for currency, even though they are not really in the EU. Another odd stat (thanks wikipedia!) is that they have the highest average life expectancy of 83.51 years. Must be all the clean mountain air and exercise.

We arrived fresh out of the tunnel at Soldeu, and we were stunned by a bunch of large, and very nice looking hotels. I was exhausted after a long stressful drive and determined not to go any further, so we stayed at the first place we stopped to rest. That hotel was okay, but a bit too crowded with children and questionable food, so we moved to a different spot the next night, the Sport Hotel Village, which was amazing. It had a three story spa, amazing food, and a great location right in front of the mountains. I bet it is a great place to visit in the winter to ski. We would have stayed another night if they hadn't been full - which we thought was odd given it was off-season and pretty quiet in town - but there were still tons of families as well as a bunch of mountain bikers around so I guess it makes sense. We did get to do a bit of hiking, even though it was cold, and the views were spectacular all around. Photos from Andorra are here - towards the end of the set.

After we left Soldeu we headed across tiny Andorra and through Andorra La Vella, where we thought we would have lunch and maybe do a bit of shopping. Yuck! What a mistake. This is the kind of place that makes me shudder - tacky shops all over, totally unplanned, horrible traffic, and trashy people swarming all over trying to get a good deal. Kind of like a low-rent outlet mall in the US, the ones in San Ysidro near the border with Mexico come to mind. In sort of an ironic protest, we ate at McDonalds...where M got beer with his value meal.