Andorra la Vella
The mountain country of Andorra has 65,000 residents and attracts 8 million visitors per year. Many come to ski, and a few to hike, but the vast majority of the summer visitors come to Andorra to shop. The principality is a tax-free zone and the endless stream of shoppers over the high mountain passes into this almost inaccessible region is a testament to the human ability to overcome all odds to avoid paying taxes and obtain more material possessions. Incidentally, the Internet domain name for Andorra, is ".ad"
Andorra has one main road that leads from Spain into France, and much of it is lined with brand name shops and billboards of every bright unnatural color imaginable. If you can imagine a gigantic strip mall sandwiched in a narrow valley between two mountain ranges, then you can envision what the first stretch of highway I saw in Andorra was like. You can also imagine my horror at having rushed through some of the most beautiful scenery in northern Spain to get to Andorra. To make matters worse, traffic was backed up for miles in the other direction, which prevented me from turning the car around in disgust.
The only thing more unpleasant than the idea of arriving into this shopaholic asylum was the reality of having to drive once I got there. Although the geography made it difficult to stray too far from the right road, moving along that road was very tricky business. The road was usually quite curvy and narrow, with only a foot or two of curbed sidewalk on each side, and motorcycles kept zooming between cars as though it were a favorite local sport; traffic jams on steep hills continued to test of my gear-shifting abilities. I passed the test, but just barely. I made the engine stall so many times I thought I would be torn to shreds by the voracious shoppers behind me. Fortunately, no one honked at me even once. Perhaps they knew that making me more nervous was not in their best interests.
After finding a hotel on the outskirts of Andorra la Vella (the old town) and spending 40 minutes trying to maneuver the car into a garage, I could finally relax a little. Happily, the hotel was very comfortable and inexpensive, and a neighboring cafeteria served a four course meal with red wine for 12 euros, which got me thinking that being a consumer wasn´t so bad after all.
Andorra la Vella is the principality´s capital town and heart of the consumer mecca, but it has a much more pleasant ambiance than the highway that approaches it. It has an architecture and layout similar to other old mountain towns, but with a modern facelift. My activities there were limited to eating half a rabbit for lunch (see upcoming photo in gallery link), finding an internet cafe to write up my Montserrat adventures of the day before, and buying a topographical map to prepare for the hike I was going to take the next day.
Fortunately, the highway after Andorra became wider, quieter and more scenic, as it went into the more remote areas nearer to the French border. Although Andorra borders on both Spain and France, it is much more strongly connected to the Spanish side, since the French border is more mountainous, and was probably impassable during the winter until recently. The Andorrans I met mostly spoke Catalan as their first language.
Andorra has one main road that leads from Spain into France, and much of it is lined with brand name shops and billboards of every bright unnatural color imaginable. If you can imagine a gigantic strip mall sandwiched in a narrow valley between two mountain ranges, then you can envision what the first stretch of highway I saw in Andorra was like. You can also imagine my horror at having rushed through some of the most beautiful scenery in northern Spain to get to Andorra. To make matters worse, traffic was backed up for miles in the other direction, which prevented me from turning the car around in disgust.
The only thing more unpleasant than the idea of arriving into this shopaholic asylum was the reality of having to drive once I got there. Although the geography made it difficult to stray too far from the right road, moving along that road was very tricky business. The road was usually quite curvy and narrow, with only a foot or two of curbed sidewalk on each side, and motorcycles kept zooming between cars as though it were a favorite local sport; traffic jams on steep hills continued to test of my gear-shifting abilities. I passed the test, but just barely. I made the engine stall so many times I thought I would be torn to shreds by the voracious shoppers behind me. Fortunately, no one honked at me even once. Perhaps they knew that making me more nervous was not in their best interests.
After finding a hotel on the outskirts of Andorra la Vella (the old town) and spending 40 minutes trying to maneuver the car into a garage, I could finally relax a little. Happily, the hotel was very comfortable and inexpensive, and a neighboring cafeteria served a four course meal with red wine for 12 euros, which got me thinking that being a consumer wasn´t so bad after all.
Andorra la Vella is the principality´s capital town and heart of the consumer mecca, but it has a much more pleasant ambiance than the highway that approaches it. It has an architecture and layout similar to other old mountain towns, but with a modern facelift. My activities there were limited to eating half a rabbit for lunch (see upcoming photo in gallery link), finding an internet cafe to write up my Montserrat adventures of the day before, and buying a topographical map to prepare for the hike I was going to take the next day.
Fortunately, the highway after Andorra became wider, quieter and more scenic, as it went into the more remote areas nearer to the French border. Although Andorra borders on both Spain and France, it is much more strongly connected to the Spanish side, since the French border is more mountainous, and was probably impassable during the winter until recently. The Andorrans I met mostly spoke Catalan as their first language.
posted by Dmitri Evseev at 4:40 PM
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