Hotel Magic Pas Pas de la Casa

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Andorra la Vella is a duty-free town in a duty-free country. I guess that’s its other claim to fame. The traffic jelly is pretty bad on a Thursday, and I imagine much worse on a weekend. There’s no particular border control with Spain, but returning to France might be backed up, what with cheap cigarettes and all. I look at the electronics, and price cameras, but naah… duty-free doesn’t mean ...

... days will get some entries soon.

Today, we started from France, and drove a few miles into Andorra. So we have now done 10 of the 11 countires!!

Photos to follow, I'll just go back and put some news on the other days, then get photos loaded up. That takes ages.

... the terrace, but was told I'd have to go inside to get the set menu - no problem, I went inside and sat out on the second floor terrace. I sat around for about 20 minutes, with a group of waiters seemingly on a break, sitting and chatting at a table inside.

I decided to go down to the main floor to get a menu and get some service. The original waitress came back up a few minutes later, informing me that the restaurant was closed. WTF??? Shoddy ...

Els Caçadors: a very good, family-run hotel in Ribes with both 1-star and 3-star accomodation. Very good food and reasonable prices. There are also other possibilities for accomodation in Ribes, which as far as service is concerned has all you need. I recommend this as a base for your excursions to the peaks around Núria. Much cheaper than living in the hotel at Núria.

The monastery-turned-hotel Núria, north of the town of Ribes de Freser in Catalunya, Spain is an excellent destination for walking. There are several peaks around the hotel, enabling you to do comfortable and rewarding day-treks. Some peaks: Noufonts, Noucreus, Eyne, Puigmal... (can't remember all names right now). Altitude from 2000 to 3000 meters.

... the (one) driveway gave us the opportunity to escape, A trip that should have taken a couple of hours turned in to a full day by the time we were ready to stop. Then, for the second time on this trip, the hotel we had plugged in o PG turned out to be closed. No tourist information and nobody on the streets. Good thing the next hotel was open. Anyway, enough of that. The next day we woke to sunshine that just got better during the day. We checked out ...

... Marcello, the mid-thirties, long-curly-haired, bitter Argentinian. He calls almost every single tourist who comes in an "imbecile" or "idiota" under his breath. On some slow days, we supermarket-shelve-stockers stand around debating what we should do but mostly just talking. Marcello acts as though he has a suggestion. And he still stands in place, but he begins to twiddle his thumbs. Cyril, Arnaud, Alex, and I join him. Geez, manual labor is tough. bye bye, Modern Oddyseus

Following our enjoyable day of snowboarding, Klara the Czech wasn´t always her usual excited self when I went to visit her bar. Some days, she would barely say me a word. She later explained that this was usually due to her being in a week-long state of miserable sickness. (She had a fever of 102 degrees Fahrenheit. And her side hurt as if a rib was broken.)

Some days, she was a tiny-headed sun of fun like before. But - uncertain if I was going to get ...

... generously gave Dave and me our first snowboarding lessons. We strapped our boots into the snowboards. Ricky told us to squat-stand on our "boar-r-r-rds" (boards). He told us to dig our heels into the snow to apply brakes. He told us to extend one arm toward our desired direction to steer, and to fold our other arm against our chest. At first, all we did was fall down on our butts. Hotshot seven-year-olds skiied past us, laughing at us in tickled festivity ...