Europe 2021: Andorra

Europe 2021:

Andorra

I was adamant that we make it to Andorra on this trip, even though it was quite out of the way, for one reason:  Andorra was the final check box on our European Microstate Bingo quest! We had previously visited Monaco, Malta, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, San Marino, and the Vatican. 

To make that happen, we flew from Malaga up the coast to Barcelona where we rented a car and drove the two or three hours to Andorra for an overnight stay. 

I could write an entire post on parking in Europe. If we thought our Volkswagen Caddy was big, we were in for some real fun parking our 7-Series BMW for the rest of the trip! It's hard to describe how small European hotel underground parking can be at times, and how odd. It's like they just find a void under the building and start drawing parking spaces facing every which way. We were fortunate in Andorra that a guy was helping us and realized quickly it was going to be a nightmare getting it into the bowels of the garage, so he angled us into a spot reserved for deliveries usually.

Back home, this 7-Series wouldn't even make the top 5 for largest vehicle at our house, but over here it might as well have been a semi!

Nel had to climb behind our car to get the bags out.

  

I didn't know what to expect from Andorra, but I really liked it! It was like a ski town deep in the mountains. It was clean and charming, and there were some interesting recreational things to do if we had been here at the right time of year.

One interesting and incredibly surprising thing about Andorra is that it seems to have an overabundance of specialty toy shops. I'm not sure why, but there were all kinds of shops dedicated to model trains, diecast cars, Legos, etc. It was awesome!

They also have one of those massive Caldea Spa places there, which Nel and I visited in the evening. It was interesting, but I'm not sure I'm the "spa with 100 people" type. 

Otherwise, we just spent a single night here and some of a couple of days. It's a charming place and I wouldn't mind going back some time. Mostly we ate and I worked late at night as was my usual for this trip.