Why go to Andorra? Because until recently I had never even heard of it. It is this tiny, tiny land-locked country located between France and Spain. It has a very odd history, which I won't bother explaining (you can look it up elsewhere). Andorra turned out to be a very beautiful place certainly worth traveling to. But it kept surprising me at every turn. Every time I thought, "ah, I understand what Andorra is all about," they would hit me with something I wasn't expecting.
I figured that it would be extra cool to go there because I figured, "Who ever goes to Andorra?" A whole lot of people have been to France, so when I tell people that I've been there, I get a 'ho-hum'. But I thought that if I told people that I'd been to someplace obscure like Andorra, they'd be more impressed, if they'd even ever heard of it. I looked forward to having to pull out a map to prove to people that the place even existed.
As it turns out, Andorra isn't as obscure as I thought it would be. Sure, they only have 66,000 citizens, and it is a relatively inaccessible country, but it has two things going for it; skiing and no sales tax. Because of this Andorra is a popular tourist destination for people looking to buy cheap consumer goods and/or go skiing. I read that they get no less than 11 million tourists per year! When I read that I started to regret going because it didn't seem to have that cool obscurity factor that I as looking for. But, we were already on our way, so we didn't change our plans.
It isn't too hard to get to Andorra by car. It is about a 2-3 hour drive straight south from Toulouse. If you don't have a car, don't bother trying to get there. There is no airport or train station. We headed south, by the only road that goes to Andorra, which goes through the cities of Foix, Tarascon and Ax-les-Thermes. We drove through a 4 kilometer tunnel under a mountain near Foix. We stopped for a quick lunch in the little town of Autrieve. As we neared the border we were excited because we were hoping to get our passports stamped. We hadn't gotten a stamp as we arrived in France, but we didn't care about that too much because France isn't that obscure, but we didn't want to miss out on a rarity like a Andorran visa! That would be quite the coup for our passport visa collections.
There is a small town on the border called Pas de la Casa. As we headed over the hill and into the town, we started wondering where the actual border crossing was. Had we missed it? It was a little confusing and it was hard to tell exactly which country you were in. Eventually the road led to what looked like a guard shack of some sort and a fence. As we drove up to it we slowed down, figuring that the guard inside would want to ask us some questions or something, but he didn't even look up from his magazine. The car behind us honked impatiently and so we drove off into Andorra.
We were headed to the capital, Andorra la-Vella, which is located in the middle of the country, so we took the road that bypassed the border town and headed over the mountains. We stopped at a little turn off just above Pas de la Casa to take a break. It was pretty exciting that we were in Andorra. We stood by the car for a few minutes and watched the mountains. There was also a herd of horses that wandered past us grazing. When I saw the horses, I thought that I had been wrong, and that Andorra was really a rural, pastoral place, not a giant tourist trap like the guide book had led me to believe.
As it turns out, the roads in Andorra are really well maintained and modern. Even so, I wouldn't want to be driving them in the winter. There were some very steep grades and sharp turns as we moved up over the mountain and into the main valley. Once we hit the top of the mountain, we stopped again to admire the view.
Click here to see some pictures of the Andorran countryside.
The air was pretty crisp and clear. I have been to a lot of mountains before, and I love the way the air tastes when you are up high. These mountains in the Pyrenees weren't as high as some other famous mountains like the Rockies or the Alps, but they were very green. I guess that it rains a lot there.
I'm sure that my perception of Andorra is going to be a lot different than that of most tourists, because I went there in the summer. Since the place is a giant ski resort, I'm sure that it is most often viewed in the winter, so if you ever go there, remember to take the season into account when you consider my comments.
It was a great day as we drove through the valley to the main city. The weather was beautiful. We stopped a few times along the way when we saw something interesting. We stopped at a waterfall. We also stopped at an old church called St. John Casselle, that was built in the 11th Century.
Click here to see some pictures of St. John Casselle.
There really is only one road to take, and it takes maybe a half hour to travel from Pas de Casa to Andorra la-Vella. We were just getting used to the vast mountain valleys and having lots of space. Then Bang! You hit Andorra la-Vella. All of a sudden it's like you are in Hong Kong. Bright neon lights, stores packed along the street selling pretty much everything you can think of. All of it duty free of course. It wasn't so much a tourist trap as it was a shopper's paradise. There were lots of stores of electronics and cameras and other items that are expensive in the rest of Europe.
Of course, to compound the problem, you still have to drive on these little skinny roads that were first mapped out a thousand years ago. The traffic in Andorra la-Vella was quite something. I'm glad that I didn't have to drive.
Click here to see some pictures of Andorra la-Vella.
It took us a while to figure out where we were going, even though we had a map. This was because the town really is quite small, and the map pretty much had every single building listed on it. It wasn't the scale we were thinking of, especially since the city was so densely packed. We kept overshooting streets that we were looking for. Or course, similar to France, the Andorrans see no need to put street signs on their streets, so it was really hard to navigate. I was a little flustered by the experience. Dave took it in stride though.
We eventually figured things out and ended up at the tourist bureau. They said that they almost never get Americans, but they did speak some English, and they directed us to some hotels. We decided to stay in downtown Andorra la-Vella, because we thought (incorrectly) that it was probably the only place that would have a number of hotels, and would have any night life. We thought about prices, and learned that one of the fanciest hotels around, The Hotel Pyrennes, was only about $80 a night due to the great exchange rate (and maybe the fact it was off-season), so we decided to stay there. They also had free parking.
It was already late afternoon by the time we settled in, so we decided to just explore Andorra la-Vella. As it turns out, there isn't all that much to explore. The place is pretty densely packed, but it only goes on for a few blocks before it turns residential, and the whole city is only about 2 miles from one end to the other. Again, I was surprised by Andorra. Upon seeing the Hong Kong aspects, I figured that it was an international party center, and that there would be a lot to do and a lot to see and it would be open 24-hours a day catering to some of the 11 million tourists that supposedly come each year. Again, I was wrong. The city was actually pretty quiet. We didn't find all that much, and most places closed pretty early. The only place that seemed to be active at night was the Placa Guiellemo, which was a few blocks from the main square, and was where the only youth hostel was located. There were a few bars and restaurants there that were open late. We had dinner and a few beers at a bar, but that's all. The bar was filled with locals speaking Catalan, so we didn't talk to anybody. We hoped to find tourists there, but there weren't any, probably because it was summertime.
one thing that I was excited about was getting some actually Andorran currency. Again, I figured that it would make a conversation piece when I got back to the US. Unfortunately, I learned that they don't have their own currency, they just use Spanish money (they also take Francs). They are going to the Euro in 2002 anyway.
Another thing about Andorra that you should know is that the language isn't French or Spanish, but Catalan. Catalan is like a cross between French and Spanish, but I speak some French and some Spanish and I couldn't converse at all. Very few people speak English. Luckily the pointing method seemed to work and we were able to buy food and items.
The next morning we got up early and headed out to the countryside again to do some exploring. Andorra basically has three roads. From Andorra la-Vella you can head east to Pas de Casa, you can head north to the ski areas, or you can head south to Spain. We started by heading north. I wasn't sure that we would be able to make it out of the city because of the small, winding, unlabeled roads, but we made it. As soon as you are outside of Andorra la-Vella, Bang! You are back in the rural countryside. We headed north to the town of Ordino, which is (I think) the second biggest city in Andorra. It was much more like I had originally expected. It was small town-y, and quiet. It was what I would've expected based on my first impressions from when I arrived in Andorra. There were few cars and plenty of free parking, so we decided to walk around. If I were going back to Andorra, I would definitely stay in Ordino as opposed to Andorra la-Vella. It was much more quaint. It was quite a beautiful little village. We got there just as the kids were queuing up to go to school, but that is about the only people we saw on the streets. We stopped in a small shop and bought some drinks for our anticipated hike. There are some trails that start in Ordino, but they were long and we decided to wait until we saw more of the countryside before starting a long hike.
Click here to see some pictures of Ordino.
North of Ordino are a bunch of tiny little towns strung along the only road. They are so small that you are usually out of them before you even notice that you've gotten into them. I noticed two things about Andorra. First, it seems that there are no single family homes. Everybody lives in small apartment buildings. There is enough room for small single-family homes, but there just aren't any. It might be a traditional thing, or maybe they pack people's homes together for better heating efficiency in the winter. The second thing that I noticed was that they were building, building, building! Everywhere you turn they had construction cranes. Maybe it is because they can only build in the summer, but man, they were building. And it was all hotels. There were huge numbers of hotels up in the ski areas. Every other building was a hotel. Perhaps the reason that we didn't see any tourists in Andorra la-Vella was because that was where the locals live, while the tourists head up to the ski areas? But let me tell you, you can't swing a dead cat in Andorra without hitting a large hotel. Perhaps they are all booked up in the winter.
There was also a lot of road work going on. Overall, the roads were very good in Andorra. I figured that is because since the country is so small, the government has little else to be responsible for but roads (Andorra has no army for example).
We followed the road as north as far as we could go until we reached the Arcalis ski resort. Since it was summertime, it was pretty dead. They had one ski lift operational for hikers. I had never been on a ski lift before and the idea of hiking down sounded a lot better than hiking up, so we got on the lift and did a little hiking.
Click here to see some pictures of our hiking adventure.
As we hiked down the mountain, we got to see first hand how a river forms, from the first drops of melting ice to a small stream, to a larger book, to a raging river.
Click here to see some pictures of how a river forms.
After avoiding almost certain death on the mountain (see the hiking picture section for more details), we got back in the car and drove southwards. We stopped in the tiny village of Llorts for lunch, at the only restaurant they had there. Llorts only had about 4 buildings. We also stopped at a few old churches that they have nearby. Most of them were built in the 12th Century.
Click here to see some pictures of Llorts and the north part of Andorra.
You can really see all of Andorra in one day. I mean it, the place is a lot smaller than the map makes it out to be. I suppose that it because I am used to national maps covering more area. We took both forks of the northern road, hiked for two hours, and had lunch, and there was still a lot of daylight left. So, we took the southern road to Spain. This leads to the not-so-nice part of Andorra. The road down there is mostly just an industrial suburb of Andorra la-Vella. It does lead to Spain, but we didn't go in. Mostly because Dave didn't have his passport. I'm sure that no one would've stopped us, but I didn't want to risk it, so we headed back to the hotel.
That night we were determined to find some tourists, or at least something interesting to do. The guidebook said that a restaurant called Papa Nico was "the place to see and be seen", so we headed there. It was pretty much just a Tapas bar, and the people there didn't seem all that interesting or worthy of being seen. We walked around shopping for a while, and found the tourist things to see in town. This consists primarily of the parliament building and the Place del Poble. Neither of which really commanded more than a few minutes of time. I also went to the Swatch store and bought a watch, mostly so people would say to me, "Hey that's a cool watch, where did you get it?" and I would reply, "Andorra!" The guidebook said that you needed to be careful about buying things in Andorra because they have no consumer protection laws, but I figured that Swatch is a good brand name and it is a corporate-owned store. Of course, the thing keep horrible time. It usually loses an hour a day. Of course, now that I'm home it seems to be working fine, so maybe it was just Dave messing it up when I wasn't looking...
After shopping we wound up back at the Place Guiellemo for a few more drinks.
One interesting thing that I saw all over the place in Andorra were public water fountains. I think that they might be for drinking, or maybe they were traditionally used for watering horses.
Click here to see some pictures of the public water fountains.
The next morning we got up and headed back into France to see the old Cathar castles in the Languedoc.
On to the next section, Chris Goes to the Languedoc
If you are thinking of going to Peru instead of France, see my Peru Page.
If for some reason you think that I'm a great writer, and you like scary, conspiracy-laden, psychological thrillers, you can read my novel, City of Pillars, published by The Invisible College Press. It has nothing to do with France though. PS: I use my middle name as my nom de plume, but it's still me.