When you've had an adventure cruising from Dunkirk through 'Windmills and Wine' and arriving at your destination been occupied modifying the boat, you tend to get a bit of cabin fever.
I hope I'm not annoying or offending the moderators with this following post.
Having just changed the car we decided to give it a bit of test run.
Between France and Spain is a range of mountains known as the Pyrenees, there are a few minor roads which cross it the middle which are blocked by snow for 6 months of the year, basically there are 2 main routes, one to the North of the Pyrenees and one to the South. See the photo.
In the middle of this mountain range is a tiny landlocked country called Andorra.
It's mountainous, has hot thermal springs and snow for 5/6 months of the year. It's jointly administered by both Spain and France (rotating every 6 months).
Before France and Spain joined the EU it was a very well known 'offshore' banking capital, it still enjoys especially low tax rates on goods/fuel etc and many French and Spanish visitors go there for ski-ing in the winter months and to buy cheap tobacco and spirits.
I know it sounds strange but there's lots of water up there in the mountains, this is used to provide hydro electricity for everyone and the warm thermal spring were used for many years by the locals.
In the main town of Caldea they've now built an ultra modern complex with Swimming pools, Roman baths, Steam rooms, Sauna's, Beauty/Massage service etc.
We used a site called Groupon to grab ourselves a deal with 2 nights in a hotel and 4 hours at the complex including a massage for 180 Euro's for us both.
We also found there a totally unexpected, magnificent Scale Model Train shop, I've never seen such a volume of working models and scales, it's not my thing, but if anyone's into working model railways they can be found at
info@basarvalira.com , bear in mind there are no trains in Andorra which made it more of a shock. photo's.
Beside the tourist office is a statue of a girl making lace. photo.
Copper stills are used to make perfumes, these of course can be put to other uses and we saw 96% proof alcohol on sale !
Air dried ham is a speciality of this region and this shop is also a bar where you can get air dried ham based tapas with your beer.