Crazy Nights in Andorra
Disclaimer: I have been back in Barca since Sunday, I’m just slow in posting. This is a long one. I am very sorry.
Andorra is a tiny country with a total population of 70 thousand. It declared war on Germany during WW I but has no military and was officially at war with Germany until 1957 because it was left out of the Peace Treaty of Versailles (hey, I’ve been there). It is a tax haven and pretty much everything there is duty free (which basically equates to a lot of cheap electronics and cigarettes). Although 80% of the country’s GDP comes from tourism, it doesn’t know whether to be touristy or not. The capital is Andorra La Vella and is three hours from the nearest airport and doesn’t have a train station. The largest and most recognizable building is a spa in the middle of the town in the form of a giant glass spire. The main street was impeccably lit and kept spotless. I honestly felt like I was in a Disney town. There are no homeless people in Andorra. Andorra is not in the EU. We heard people speaking Catalan, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and another language that I assumed was some mixture of French and Catalan. I also heard a little Italian but never English. We only found two people who could speak passable English the entire time.
We enjoyed having some delicious tapas, found a really cool jazz bar and enjoyed some incredible hiking. At the jazz bar on Saturday, we heard this great band. One of them was speaking English so we started talking to him after the show. Turns out he is from New York. He randomly met some musicians in Amsterdam while promoting a CD and they decided to make some music together and are now touring to promote it. Of all places to run into random American musicians from New York but a tiny tiny jazz bar in Andorra. The rest of the musicians were from Barcelona and have two shows this weekend on top of Casa Mila. Maybe we can get in free…
For dinner, we found a great tapas restaurant that was a hole-in-the-wall locals place. Delicious. We recognized some of the names but after a while we started to get adventurous. Everything we tried was great… tuna, calamari, potatoes, mussels, fried peppers. We were feeling pretty adventurous so we decided to jump out on a limb and try something we didn’t recognize. Callos. It showed up as chunks of wiggly slimy white gelatinous stuff with honeycomb veins in a red stewy sauce. We debated back and forth what it was. Possibilities included pork fat, starfish, and any number of other sea-urchin like creatures. Well, when we got back, I googled it. Callos is made from tripe. Okay. I’m thinking that sounds like any other fish, kinda like Carp. So then I google tripe. Well, as it turns out we were eating the stewed lining of a cow’s stomach. Well, I didn’t really eat it. I took one bite, politely spit it in my napkin and let Kevin finish the bowl. Oh well, one bad dish out of 12. At 3 euros, you can afford to be a little adventurous.
We also went hiking up in the Pyrenees. We took a bus out to a tiny village called Ordino and just started walking. The lady at our hotel exaggerated when she said that there were only 10 houses in this village, but not by much. The mountains were huge on a scale that shames the Rockies. Incredible panoramic views of the valley that Andorra sits in. No wonder it is forgotten by most of the world, it is completely closed off and unless you knew where you were going, you would never find it. We hiked for several hours and enjoyed the incredible waterfalls and snow-capped mountains in the distance. Looking at a map later, I realized that if we had been backpacking and continued in the same direction for another few hours, we would’ve hiked straight into France!
All in all, Andorra is a pretty cool place. Made for a great weekend trip, only 4 hours away by bus. Oh, and if you have the choice between the bus that goes direct and the bus that makes a few stops on the way. Take the direct bus. On the way home we saw every tiny village between Andorra La Vella and Barcelona.
Today is the celebration of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, but I’ll tell all about that tomorrow. I need to go shower, we are going out for Kevin’s birthday tonight.