Andorra

When we arrived to Spain, Esteban and Noelia told us about this mythical place called “Andorra”.  Colin and i were a bit clueless and soon found out that it was a real country!  Obviously, neither of us paid much attention in World Geography!  Andorra is a very small country in between Spain and France… about 3 hours north of Barcelona.  We all took a road trip and headed up there for a weekend.

We left in the morning and our first stop was breakfast.  Esteban and Samuel love this one place to eat.  It’s a restaurant where you pay 3 euros to get in, and there is all kinds of raw meet laid out (mostly pork products… many different kinds of sausages, bacon, ham…)  You pick what you want and take it to the grills provided, and cook away.  (Talk about a guys restaurant!)  Now, pork isn’t known to be the most lean of meats and I think in Spain, it’s probably 40% fat!  I’ve never seen so much grease on a flat grill in my life!  All I can say is, thank goodness for the eggs and tomatoes they provided… but by the time i finished cooking them, they were covered in as much grease as everything else.  When the grilling was finished, this is what Colin’s plate looked like.  looks appetizing doesn’t it…  And of course, this picture does no justice to the amount of grease the was actually on the plate.

Once we were full on grease, we continued our trip.  We arrived before lunch and were able to check into our hotel.  Then the rest of the day we spent driving around and looking at the breathtaking Andorra.  We were lucky enough because the first snows had already hit, and yes, there were a few snowball fights.  The whole country of Andorra is in the middle of huge mountains.  Most of the towns are located in the valleys, but there are some that are on the mountains themselves.  It’s mainly a country for tourism and winter sports, with a few VERY wealthy residents.  During the winter time, Andorra is packed with skiers, snowboarders, and other winter sports.  They do have other activities in the warmer seasons like hiking and mountain biking.

This photo was taken around 1:30 – 2pm.  So 9 degrees Celsius was the high for the day…. brrrrrrrrr!

We went to the top of some mountains where the ski fields were.  They weren’t open quite yet, but there were many people skiing and sledding on their own.  I (Andre’a) haven’t been sledding since i was in elementary school and lived in Maryland, so i was half tempted to bribe one the kids into letting me borrow one for slide down the hill.  But, i decided that the kids were having too much fun to take away their “toys”…

The whole group… Samuel, Julie (his one year old daughter who had never seen snow before!), Sandra, Noelia, Esteban, me, and Colin

The architecture of the buildings is beautiful!  Most of the houses, hotels, flats, and store buildings are all stone with the windows trimmed in wood and the roofs are all black tilling.  It was a nice change from all the stucco building where we are with the Spanish roof tiles.  (The stucco building are amazing themselves, but the homey feel of the stone buildings in the mountains makes you want to curl up on the couch next to a fire drinking a cup of hot cocoa.)

Colin “needed” to take this picture as proof to you all that Andorra is a real country.  Here he is outside a government building.

By:  Colin and Andre’a Feldhaus

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