Andorra

Andorra, for those of you who don't know, is a small country between Spain and France. I had never heard of it, but it's there. We were driving back from Barcelona, and we decided to stop in Andorra just to see what it was like and to get a t-shirt. We were driving through a bunch of tunnels, and when we weren't in a tunnel, it was just grassy mountains and valleys on either side. Then suddenly we hit Andorra, and there were lots of security guards checking the cars. Because it's a part of the EU, you don't have to show your passport or change currency, which was nice. We ate lunch at a small place by an artificial duck pond. The menu was in four languages (Spanish, Catalan, French, and English) and our waiter appeared to be good with all of them. The ducks were free to come and go around the place, which was a little bit weird. Andorra has really low tax rates compared to Spain and France, so the entire place is filled with stores. As Mom put it, "It would be quicker and easier to buy a car than to find a place that sold touristy shirts. We did have a lot of trouble finding stuff, mostly because the Andorrans spend until three eating lunch. And I thought the Spanish and the French were slow. There wasn't much in the way of interesting historical sites, so we really didn't spend much time there. Everybody was pretty nice, but it didn't feel quite right. Every little bit reminded you of something from a place you'd already been, but it didn't really cohere. Nothing seemed to go together in a nice way. I suppose the ski lodges we saw on the way out wouldn't have been bad. It didn't make a very good impression on us, though. We had lunch and ice cream, bought shirts, and left pretty quickly. And that was that. Not even any pictures to help us remember how glorious it was.