I spent all of Monday night furiously hunting for ways that I could make it to the Pyrenees for some R&R and mountain time to almost no avail. Spain makes it crazy fast, cheap, and easy to go literally everywhere else in the country, but the Pyrenees, while they're 2.5-3 hours away can't be accessed without a car or a multi-day dedication to seventy buses. But then the excerpt on Andorra from my touristy book fell into my lap and so did divine providence. Andorra is the baby country squished in the Pyrenees in between France and Spain. Apparently it's been around for over 600 years and up until recently was a co-princedom.
There's a great direct bus (called Direct Bus) from Barcelona to Andorra La Vella (the capital of Andorra) that takes 3 hours and has wifi. I kind of jokingly thought I would try to go to Andorra sometime during this sabbatical, mostly to add another country to the count, but HAD NO IDEA. So
The beginning of my trip began at 5 am with two cockroaches. One was the fluttery brown kind that flies directly into your nostril when you're trying to get on the metro. The other was the tall human kind that told me he'd quit his job to come with me and his wife would never have to know. Really flattered that I could still be hit on with one of my eyes still half shut and no toothpaste in sight.Slept the entire way there until suddenly I woke up and we were buried between two glorious mountains and speeding past a shining lake. We didn't even stop at Customs. Pretty much from that moment until my return my mouth was wide open and my brain was just a constant stream of "panic" "I'm moving here" and "Andorra, Adore-A." For anyone and everyone who has Spain or France or anywhere in the world on their travel list, immediately add Andorra.
They have a free pamphlet to welcome you to their country with all the information you would ever need. At least twenty pages are dedicated to telling you what Andorra is the capital of. The capital of the Pyrenees. The capital of culture. The capital of gastronomy. The capital of skiing. The capital of [insert really any random word here and they'll claim it]. The people there just love. They speak Catalan, French, Spanish, and some English so I basically used the extent of my knowledge of each and they all thought I was French at first guess. Je m'appelle Allie. Everyone I met was so dear and friendly, probably because they moved there to live in the mountains and not deal with politics and just enjoy God's beauty forever. And make free pastries for tourists.
So the first day I was there I hiked to the oldest Romanesque church in the mountains, which was built in 1200 something and gave me great views of the whole little inhabited valley. The entire way there was wild food. Apples, pears, blackberries, raspberries. Tried them all and survived them all. Thought that was beautiful. Thought the trip had peaked. Then I hiked the "Sola" path, which runs along the mountainside about 50 m above the valley and follows the path of an irrigation canal. There's the shade version on the other side. Pretty much you emerge from the old quarter with stone cottages into this madness of precarious hill gardens growing only things with lots of bright colors or curly vines. And I stayed there in awe until sunset and that was amazing.
But the next day was even better. I found out how to take the bus to the next village up. There are like seventeen buses that run between these four villages, and I have no idea why they have that many because only like fifteen people live in Andorra. Plus some are only "local" which I think means they circle one square block or something. So I went to La Massana and Arinsal. At Arinsal I started on a hike to a Refugi (basically a small stone hut where you can sleep for free in the mountains). I don't have much to say that does better than the pictures, but I learned that the national bug is the grasshopper because those are more prevalent than air. Butterflies and violets in mountain meadows happen outside of Pollyanna. And when I thought it couldn't get better, real cows with real literal cow bells and wild horse friends were frolicking everywhere. I sang "The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Music" at least eleven times and never wanted to leave. But I hiked way more than planned and was getting scared I hadn't left enough time to come back for my bus. I came upon a sign though that was either encouraging or devastating as it said "Arinsal, 2.1 km, 2 hours 55 min." I'm not really sure what person (who could have physically made it to read that sign) would have taken 3 hours to hike 2.1 km, so I chose to ignore that snippet and unfortunately made it back in plenty of time to force myself to go home to Barcelona.
Seriously Andorra is perfection. The weather. The people. The mountains. Probably going to go back a few times.
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