What a bizarre little country, Andorra. Nestled into the mountainous terrain between Spain and France, Andorra is basically a series of tiny little mountain towns. They’re completely unlike, say, Swiss mountain towns, in that each town consists of a small cluster of giant buildings. No cozy wooden mountain huts in sight. As a trade off there were some cute crossing signal men.
We decided that Solden was the cutest of the Andorran towns we drove through, with its pretty stone buildings lining the street. It, like pretty much every other town in Andorra, seemed to be gearing up for the coming ski season.
Catalan is the official language in Andorra, but there’s plenty of French and Spanish around, too. With all those other languages taking precedence, there’s a little less English around than you find in other Western European countries.
Andorra is known for its low taxes, and is thus a big shopping destination for luxury goods, liquor, and gasoline. We were stopped by French customs agents on our way back into France. As we pulled up next to a car that was being thoroughly searched by several agents, we were happy that we had nothing but a bottle of whisky and a jar of Spanish olives to declare.
On our way home from Andorra we stopped in Foix, France, for dinner. After wandering around the old town’s narrow, cobblestoned streets to take in the offerings, we settled on the very popular Le Jeu de l’Oie (17, rue Lafaurie). There was no English menu but the staff was very friendly and humored our crappy French language abilities. I had a delicious cheese plate. Mmmmmm French cheese.
I've had a weird obsession with Andorra since grade school: we had to do a project on a random country, and somehow I pulled that one at random out of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I'm still kicking myself that I've been within 200 km of it several times and never made the detour.
Did you drive there from France? I had the pleasure of riding my bicycle down that road in summer, 1983.. after cycling all the way up the other side from Spain. Lots of shops there, that's for sure. I bought a pair of good sunglasses for next to nothing thanks to the tax break.
Mark – I'm surprised you never made it there! You'll have to add it to the list for when you come back to visit.
Ian – Wow, that's some mighty impressive cycling. Even the car was struggling with that road (we just drove there for the day from France).