Andorra

I'm doing a very bad job of keeping up with our blog posts.

On Friday, October 10:
From Bilbao, we drove to the small principality of Andorra, which is governed by co-princes -- one from Spain, the other from France. It was a 6 1/2 hour drive, largely in the rain with a LOT of tolls. We did get to drive a bit through the French countryside on a very narrow, winding road. Scott would have loved to have had his Lotus on those turns. Fortunately, we had a break from the rain during that stretch of the trip.

Andorra is beautiful. We both think it looked a lot like the Argyle Forest in Scotland on the drive in -- steep mountains, Scot pines, and a few trickling waterfalls and brooks. There were a number of cows on the sides of the mountains, some right along the roadside. I think it's the first time I've seen cows actually wearing cowbells.  

Once we were amidst the small towns sprinkled along the mountainside, it was typical ski-towns with buildings made of stone and timber. It's all very pretty!

We're staying in the very small town of Erts, which is in the northwest part of Andorra -- very near the Spain and France borders. The capital (Andorra la Vella) is a big shopping mecca. We did lots of walking and looking but no shopping. Most of it was brands we could get back home and wasn't worth the exchange rate or lugging it back in our bags. It's tough to compare prices with those at home since I don't shop a lot, but they were supposedly discounted and I believe tax free.

We left on Sunday -- staying in each city/town on our trip just 2 nights -- and exited through Spain to Barcelona. That drive was pretty as well although not as dramatic as the one to Andorra from the French side.

I haven't downloaded photos from this part of our trip yet, but will update the posts with photos at some point.

Today, we arrived in Seville -- after Barcelona, so I have at least 2 more posts to complete before we return home.