Bob:

This was our day to see the Principality of Andorra, so after a good night's sleep and a very leisurely breakfast (included with our hotel room), I worked the car out of its underground garage giving thanks to the Powers That Be that I had a small Ford Focus and nothing larger. In fact, if anything I would have preferred a smaller car in Spain, which is the same feeling I have had previously when driving in Europe.

Leaving town, we headed 10 kilometers North to Andorra. Andorra is basically a long, narrow valley sandwiched between the steep, craggy sides of the Pyrenees with France to the North and Spain to the South. Although it was intermittently spitting rain at us as we drove in, the mountains in Andorra seemed a bit more arid than the ranges further South in Spain. The light yellowish green leaves and occasional spring flowers like wild poppies alongside the road were a sign that the spring season had just arrived in Andorra at the time we visited.

Andorra was clearly experiencing a building boom. Construction cranes, cement trucks, and lane closures all testified to the new buildings going up everywhere there was still a flat surface to build on. In some cases, they were clearly carving away the sides of a mountain to get a flat space to build, and in one case that left a house perched rather precariously on the remaining pinnacle of rock. If I were that homeowner, I would have objected to suddenly having the fence line of my yard suddenly transformed into a cliff with a 100-foot drop off! I would imagine the owner would have to be super-careful of dogs and grandchildren to avoid losing them.

We had intended to drive all the way through Andorra to the French border, but as we approached the French side the road rose to an altitude of over 5,000 feet. As we continued to drive up the valley the temperature dropped down to 2 degrees Celsius and the rain turned into sleet with snow. The GPS unit with the topographical contour lines in it showed me that the road ahead climbed a series of switchbacks for another 1,000 feet or so before traveling along a ridgeline toward the French border. I simply didn't fancy driving mountain switchbacks in the ice and snow, so I simply executed a "180-degree turn" and drove back in the direction of Spain.

Monika:

Bob:

Since the middle of Andorra is basically wall-to-wall city, it was difficult to find a parking space but finally we found a pay space and I eased our car into it. We went for a walk and found the main government buildings housing many different bureaucratic functions, but neither hide nor hair of a Post Office, which is the main thing we were trying to find. I had thought it would be neat to mail postcards from Andorra and maybe they would even have special Andorran stamps, but that was not to be. We did find a row of about 5 motorcycle dealerships and 9 motorcycle accessories shops, which is the largest concentration of those shops I have ever seen in one place. In fact, there are more motorcycle and automobile dealerships in Andorra than can be possibly used by the native population, so I strongly suspect that folks come in from Spain and France to buy vehicles because there seemed to be no Value Added Taxes nor Luxury Taxes in Andorra.

Just up the hill from the row of vehicle shops we found a similar run of at least 7 or 8 electronics shops. In fact, the central cities of Andorra seem to have all grown together into one huge outdoor shopping mall that Monika figured was about 10 kilometers long. The cities are hemmed in by the mountains and so they are not very wide, but that is still a huge number of people to be living in an area so small. The terrain is so mountainous that we saw exactly 1 small tillable field in the entire valley, and I just had to wonder what in the world supported the livelihoods of so many people. It wasn't agriculture and it wasn't industry, so I guess the entire population is supported directly or indirectly by the retail sales trade.

While walking along we would every once in a while see some sign of the "Old Andorra" peeking through all the new construction, and that was refreshing. I saw an old church and a couple of old houses with very nice designs on their sides. One thing that was completely missing was any greenery or open space like parks or plazas in the cities, which gave them an unrelieved cramped and congested feeling, especially when compared to the beautiful open cities in Spain that we had just visited. Even though we were there in an off season, the traffic was bad and there were a special cadre of Andorran traffic police working to keep traffic flowing at key intersections. I suspect that without those police the entire city would freeze up into a massive gridlock.

Walking along window shopping would have been fun except that the car exhaust fumes made me feel a bit queasy. I did find a brand new 200cc Piaggio (Vespa) scooter for 2,195 Euro; it was a special sale price and seemed like a nice 1-person scooter. The more substantial 2-person model (400cc I think) was quite a bit more, however, over 4,195 Euros. That's the one that Monika and I really needed, but I had already rented the car for this trip and we had way too much luggage leftover from the cruise to take a scooter trip. Reluctantly I gave up the idea of buying a scooter, riding it around Spain, and then shipping it home with us or maybe stashing it somewhere in Germany for use in the future. (However sad that made me, I expect that decision made my eldest son happy and his wife even happier!)

Monika:

Bob:

As we drove back toward Spain, we stopped off at a camping store where we found a nice backpack in a child's size, and some "Commercial Centers" that were large discount stores with free parking (!) sandwiched between the main road and the river running down the valley. Food prices seemed reasonable and we stocked up on necessities like Toblerone dark chocolate (2.85 Euro for 400 gram size), Haribo licorice candy, butter biscuits, wine and soda. From that shopping list you can tell how healthy we eat! Digital cameras were heavily advertised and we looked for a replacement for Monika's Kodak V-610 but didn't find it at all. In general, the prices seemed slightly higher than we could find at discount stores or at Amazon.com in the U.S. when we converted the Euro prices to dollars using the 1.35 dollars-to-Euros exchange rate.

Stopping only to have our luggage searched by Spanish Customs, we returned to La Seu d' Urgell, squeezed the car back into its dungeon parking space, and walked back to the hotel to rest for the afternoon. We both finished updating our journals, checked our email, and Monika planned our route for the next day. That gave us also a chance to read a bit and really relax in the evening.

Monika: