Lost in Andorra

If you are a young adult looking to travel in Europe; stroll in awe of ancient roman and gothic architecture during the day, and gorge yourself on foreign foods and party during the night, I wouldn't necessarily suggest Andorra as the most thrilling place to visit. However, if you want a pleasant mountain getaway, Andorra is home to natural parks with multiple trails, an ecologically sound amusement park called Naturlandia that has dogsled tours, paintball, and a wild rollercoaster thing called the Tobotronc, a rollercoaster car whose breaks you control that barrels down 5.4 km of downhill mountain track in and out of trees, and decently priced menus with good food.

Andorra is a very small country neatly tucked into the Pyranees mountains between Spain and France. So...do they speak Spanish, or French? Neither, their official language is Catalan, which is what they speak in Catalunia - the northeastern autonomous community of Spain - , but of course they speak French and Spanish as well. Coming to Andorra from Spain, or vice verse, can be quite obnoxious because there is a border check performed by the Spanish Civil Guard. Why would they do that in such a small country such as Andorra, and not on the borders of all of the other countries in the European Union? Because Andorra has weird tax laws, and goods like tobacco, booze, and electronics are very cheap. People who don't live too far used to come up every weekend to buy food and the above mentioned goods because it was reasonably cheaper than buying it in your own country.

I spent a weekend there recently, and took part in all stuff I just talked about, well, except the border check, the Civil Guard let us go without opening the trunk. Here are some pics

Maybe it was our easy-going nature, or the fact that we were far removed from anything stressful, but we forgot everything we could have forgotten all week long and still managed the reservations and directions (or lack their of as we got lost about 4 times even with the directions) without problems. Visit Andorra!