One day, 3 countries

Thursday 10^th April

Today we headed out to Andorra, only 50K away from here.

We first stopped in a little village called Bar, 4K off the main road and straight up hill. It appeared to be almost deserted though we did see a couple of men working in the centre of the town, and passed 2 cars on the road. One of the houses appeared to be built just on a rocky outcrop. It makes you wonder what on earth possessed someone to locate a village here.

 

Maybe the spring was what attracted
them to build a village here.

Every village has a church

Didn't find anything to indicate age of
village, but looked pretty ancient

Then on to Andorra (entry from Spain), and the capital Andorra La Vella. No ceremony as you cross the border, no stamps in the passport. The city is located in what passes as a valley with mountains rising on all sides. Supposedly it is good shopping in Andorra as there is no tax, but I am not a shopper so did not take advantage of this and from what I saw things weren’t that cheap. We had lunch in Andorra – hamburgers that would feed 2. Sadly, we were there at siesta time and the patchwork shop was closed.

 

View from city of Andorra La Vella

Mountains on all sides

The church, from the 11th century

We continued on north through Andorra to exit in to France. As we climbed out of the city the snowfields got bigger and bigger and all the way up the mountains there were ski resorts. There were still lots of people at the resorts and on the slopes and most of the lifts appeared to be working. I have never seen snow like it and can understand why people would head to Europe to ski. I’m not sure how long the snow lasts for skiing, or even if they can ski all year round. Very impressed! We stopped on the side of the road looking over the ski runs and had a cup of tea and slice of cake from the boot of the car.

 

Snow as far as the eye can see

The snow ploughs do a good job

Picnic on the slopes

See the sign?

One of the ski resorts

Fuel was cheap in Andorra - no taxes

Back in to France and the next stop was the patchwork shop in Bourg-Madame. I was there just in time as she closed the doors when I left the shop. One small piece of fabric to bring home, but I haven’t been able to purchase any fabric from Spain.

In my original plan for the day I’d been thinking breakfast in Spain, lunch in Andorra, and dinner in France, but it was a bit early for dinner when we hit Bourg-Madame so it was back to Spain for dinner. Again we tried to go to a different town for dinner but the places we had seen as promising on our drive through in the morning were closed or not open till 8.30 for dinner, so we headed back in to the restaurant we went to earlier in the week.