Andorra – Snowy Mountains, Stores, and Tourists

The first town we drove into was Pas de la Casa. The first coat of snow already fell, this place was like-and unlike any other European city I’ve visited. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was, but the style of the buildings was alien. Maybe more modern. This city consisted of shop after shop of basically everything one could imagine: tax free. But not only was everything tax free, the sizes were enormous, perhaps like a big Sam’s club or Costco of liqueur, whiskey, tobacco, chocolate… Also gasoline was 2/3 of the price at which the french sell it at.
Had lunch in a little restaurant where I ate 2 slices a pizza and a soup (also of huge quantity I haven’t seen since in the US), behind us was a family hanging out, smoking.. at one point I turned around, and realized there is a little kid too – and he was playing with a box of cigarettes !!
The capital (Andorra la Vella) was slightly larger, and situated well in a valley, abrupt mountains beginning at the edges of the city. This place also seemed more like a scene out of star wars or something, with the famous “Caldea” hot springs/pool in the middle, it’s obelisk of glass protruding high above any other building. Walking around, I was astonished by the immense number of pietons, most of whom were french/spanish, with some americans mingled in (the fatter ones, pretty easy to pinpoint 😀 ). Here too, the sizes of everything was enormous – like the huge 5 kilo bottle of Nutella.
In the evening, we visited the hot springs, which I would say is a cross between an amusement park and a hot springs, because not only did they have the baths, but they were positioned in a very fancy way- with basins dripping from one-another, and pools flowing from indoors to outdoors. However, I am sad to say that the baths in Hungary, especially Szecsenyi, is at least 3 times better. There was also a tiny outdoor jacuzzi, to which one had to sprint to from inside (because it was quite chilly probably sub-zero degrees). At one point, there were at least 16 of us packed into the otherwise 8-person jacuzzi. With the moon visible as you looked up, and the mountains around, it was quite exotic.
That night we stayed in a hotel; our window opened up to the mountains around, with snow glittering at the top. In the morning, after sleeping till 10, we drove up the mountainside, to a lake up higher, which was half frozen. Also found a really tiny church amongst the blanket of snow.
On the way out of the country (which by the way was not hard to find, especially in the center because signs pointed to France and Spain like street signs would normally point towards two different neighborhoods), we asked for a stamp as a souvenir, which they gladly gave (they were probably glad to talk to someone after sitting in the border patrol box all day pretty much waving everyone through.

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