We woke up yesterday in Andorra, beneath snow capped mountains and, this morning we woke up to the sounds of the ocean in Spain. Tonight — or tomorrow, or next year, whatever — we’ll go to sleep in … exotic Indiana.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Here’s the ocean, just outside our hotel room last night.
We walked down to feel the sand and hear the sound and touch the too chilly water for just a moment, before our cab to the airport came along.
This trip, like so many of our wonderful trips, was planned by my lovely bride. She’s undefeated on amazing trip planning.
Except for when they end. She hasn’t figured out how to keep them going and going and going yet.
After the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup it was time to work our way back down to Barcelona. We’re flying back tomorrow. Boo to that. Vacations are great. Andorra is beautiful. We should stay here.
Don’t think we didn’t try to figure out a way.
Anyway, leaving the parking lot, we had two options. Left, or right. And the GPS said we had three choices. Two routes with tolls, and one route without a toll.
The Yankee was driving, and she hit the touch screen, aiming at the no tolls route. We turned right out of the parking lot.
That’s opposite from where we came, but we’re inherently trusting of the GPS, aren’t we? Anyway, we continue to climb higher and ever higher into the mountains.
We’re up in this area where there are signs warning snowkiters of high winds here at 6,233 feet. We’re almost 1.2 miles above sea level.
Come to find out — and it is funny how people can make the same realization at the same time — we were headed to … France. Also this was one of the toll routes. But the views were worth the price of admission.
This is how I’ll remember the mountains. Not that the memory is bad, but I like the fuzzy feel, rather like a memory or dream sequence in a bad TV show.
But if that’s not for you, here’s the same mountain. Not sure why the camera took the moment off. Maybe it was a French-Andorran frontier issue in the software.
Anyway, we drifted peacefully down through the mountains. The altitude got lower and the temperatures warmed up. We found ourselves in a delightfully rural little corner of southwestern France. Not a part of the trip, but now a part of the trip.
By here, the car and the road was hooking around back to the south; we’re heading toward Barcelona.
So there are two countries in this post. The first few mountains are from the Andorran Pyrenees, the rest are from the French Pyrenees. Even in France we saw Catalan flags.
Here’s a video version of some of these beautiful mountains, and more.
As we continued on the terrain turned from mountain rugged, to yellow and green farmland, from the rocky entisols and inceptisols and, finally, more of the reds and oranges and ochres of the Mediterranean coastal region.
On Tuesday we saw posters in Andorra la Vella for the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, which was taking place near by. How often do you get to see the world’s best (at anything, really?) on a whim? Tickets were 10 euros, and the venue was not too far away from our apartment. These would be the perks of visiting a nation about the quarter of a size of most of the American counties I know.
So this morning we loaded our luggage in the car, had one last breakfast in Arinsal, picked up a little magnet for our refrigerator and then drove up to the skiing. We got some of the last parking available and walked in to a spectators area that wasn’t as big as most high school sports venues I’m used to. The crowd was boisterous. The sky was clear, the sun was bright and the temperatures were warm.
And, you could tell from a distance, the top of the mountain, stretches mid-way through the run, looked sheer and vertical. You’ve no idea until you see it in person. Even this shot at the finish line looks compressed and flat. It isn’t, as you’ll see.
The skiing was fantastic.
Swiss skier Lara Gut-Behrami won her fourth super-G title.
She also has an Olympic gold in this discipline.
This is what I know about skiing: they are trying to go fast. There are three timed segments on this course. And if you’re time is in the green at any of those segments, you’re in the lead. The only problem on the day was that there weren’t a lot of lead changes. Quite a few people, in the men’s and women’s races, came out with great times in that first timed stretch. The crowd would cheer, but they were wise to the course. None of that mattered if you weren’t in the green at the second timer, and if you didn’t have a crazy blend of chaos and sanity on that third leg, your time probably wouldn’t put you at the top of the board at the finish.
Only a few people could do that today, but when they did, the tension in the crowd was something physical and visceral. The tension went up, the cheering and the banging got louder. Maybe the skiers could feel it too. Maybe Marco Odermatt did.
The Swiss skier won the men’s super-G at the World Cup Finals with a huge performance. He’s on pace, apparently, to break the single season points record. I don’t have any idea how that’s tabulated, but the man in the aero suit is set to destroy a 23-year-old mark, and that’s not nothing. He could do it this weekend.
Also, we saw the greatest skier of all time.
American Mikaela Shiffrin was tied with Swedish legend Ingemar Stenmark with 86 career victories when she came down this mountain. She’d recently tied the record not too long after Stenmark, himself, said “She’s much better than I was. You cannot compare. I could never have been so good in all disciplines.”
In her career, Shiffrin, is a five-time Overall World Cup champion and a four-time world champion in slalom, an event where she also holds seven World Cup wins. She is also, of course, a two-time Olympic gold medalist.
Her wins record will continue to grow. Shiffrin is only 28, and she ended the year with 14 wins, her second best year yet, including championships in the slalom, the grand slalom and the overall.
On this day, the greatest to ever hurl herself down the face of a mountain finished 14th.
After the World Cup skiing, we got in the car and pointed it south, toward Barcelona. First we pointed it north, toward France, but that’s for another post.
We have to start our return — a multistage effort — tomorrow. That’s a downer, but there’s a beautiful day to enjoy, so no frowns. Just these amazing, happy views.
That’s what we spent the afternoon doing, seeing the countryside.
But, first, The Yankee had a bit of skiing to do.
Dr. Lauren Smith — high school All-American, D1 multisport athlete, three-time Ironman, globally renowned sports media scholar — yesterday re-taught herself how to ski from memory, after a layoff of … most of the 21st century. She did this all by herself yesterday, on rented skis, on two runs down the easy slopes. And then she decided to branch out to slightly more challenging slopes. After a dozen-plus runs over the last two days, she pronounced her legs shaky, but very much happy with the skiing. And she stayed upright the entire time.
These are the last two — I’m not sure what you’d call these, runs? — of her time in the Pyrenees. She made it look graceful and easy, as all of the skiers did. And now I want to learn to ski. This is why.
We took a few gondola rides today, to go even higher, for even more sunny, blue sky views.
I’m sure it is an illusion of size, distance and scale, but it seems weird to be above the mountains.
The rides took us to a few other ski slopes. And, look, my hair is as white as this snow. (Thanks for that, Granddad.)
Don’t eat the ski snow.
Off to the side of the slopes there was a very small parking lot. And that lot has perhaps some of the best parking lot views in all of Andorra.
There should at least be some chairs and umbrellas out there.
Apparently that little thing in the background is a slidewalk, much like you’d see at an airport. Apparently this is the kids’ slope, barely downhill. One day, ages hence, when I learn to ski, this will be the sort of setup that will be used.
This part of the world is being impacted by climate change. There should be more snow and winter out there, but things are going green in a hurry. It’s hard to imagine too many more weekends of skiing out there this season.
We were the only people there. I don’t know how anyone would go about owning a mountain, but if you have a commanding view of a mountain, and you’re the only one seeing it, that must be what it feels like to own a mountain, if only for a moment.
Here is a video of some of those views. There are also some bloopers. And some outtakes of bloopers in the video. Enjoy.
On Monday we drove over to Val d’Incles. We wanted to walk to a lake out there, but the road was closed to through-traffic and walking the rest of the way would have put us in darkness. So we drove there again, earlier, today. The road was still closed, so we walked down the single-track path.
The thing is, once you walked a fair amount down that paved path, you would have to take a gravel path to get to one of these bodies of water. And that gravel path is where the hiking begins. There are helpful signs pointing out the lakes, and the distance away, and the time your hike would take. We still didn’t allow enough time.
So part of the way up the gravel path, we found this big rock. The one she’s standing on, not the one she’s pointing at.
We sat on that rock for an hour and change, just admiring this view.
Imagine having a little cabin out here. I think many of them are seasonal, since they’re still boarded up. But spring is almost there, and we spent that time imagining leaving your place in the city and coming up to a canyon like this to take in this peaceful scenery.
This is similar to a photo that I put here a moment ago, but there must be a reason for that.
I would not mind a cup of a tea, a good book, and views like these every day.
Plus, imagine how great our greeting cards would be!
And here’s a video with some of the views from Val d’Incles — including just the third cartwheel post-catastrophic shoulder surgery.
I wonder how much time we’d spend next to a small foot bridge if we had one on our property.
There’s a creek behind us, not this one of course, and we hang out there a bit. The difference is ours doesn’t turn into a miniature waterfall, and the water isn’t snow melt. Us flatlanders find this to be a wonderful novelty. And I’ll show you some more miniature waterfalls on Friday. But first this one.
And, yes, a version of that photo will soon be a part of the site’s art, but, then, a lot of things we’re seeing this week will soon decorate the place. There are beautiful things to see everywhere here. I didn’t set this up, and I’m hardly trying, but this is the very next photograph I took.
And walking back down that small road, to where we parked our rental car. The sun was high, but the mountains are too, and the light grows dim in Val d’Incles quickly.
Here’s one more view of the eastern side of the valley.
We went back into Andorra la Vella for dinner, and sat down for a place that takes great pride in grilling meats. We also wanted to return to this playground, which we saw yesterday, to try this contraption.
A kid was on it before we went to the spa. Same kid was on it hours later. This evening, two girls were playing there. We stared them down, ran them off, and took a few turns. This was fun. I don’t know what you call this, but every playground needs one.
After four or five back-and-forths, we drove back up to our apartment in Arinsal. Time to get backed up. We’ll have one more Andorra adventure tomorrow, and then it is back down to sea level and Barcelona, tomoorrow. Then, Friday, the airport, and a long day of travel back to the U.S.
Happy Tuesday from a delightful little part of Europe. We’re high in the mountains, and this is the delightful little view from our delightful little balcony at the ski lodge in Arinsal. You can also see a fair amount of the village below.
If you turn your head to the left a bit, as I did, while you were enjoying your morning tea, as I was, you would see this other delightful little hill.
Everything is delightful, then. So much so, I had more than one cup of tea this morning.
The Yankee, for her part, went skiing. We’re in the Pyrenees. We’re at a ski lodge. Why wouldn’t you go skiing? She hasn’t been on skis in a few decades and was eager to give it a try. I was eager for her to start out on the bunny slopes, which she did. She rented some equipment from one of the 45 rental places in this small town, borrowed my coat, and found her ski legs again. She said she did a couple of runs down the smallest slopes, and then tried a few more challenging routes.
In my mind, she was blazing her way down this mountain.
She came back to our apartment sweaty, smiling, and extremely happy with her first ski adventures in 23 or so years, in New England.
The plan for the day, which saw rain and snow in the forecast, was to stay indoors. Turns out you can’t trust weather forecasts in the high mountains. The weather, aside from some early sunny snow fall mid-morning, was pitch perfect.
We made our way down the mountains into Andorra’s capital, Andorra la Vella, population 23,000.
Come to find out, today is Constitution Day in Andorra. This is one of their four big holidays. (Happy Constitution Day, Andorra!) All of the shopping is closed down, which is fine, that’s not our purpose, but a big part of the local economy. Most of the restaurants and other businesses were closed, too. Apparently everyone went skiing.
We had lunch in a subdued little Italian joint overlooking an empty lot where kids were chasing pigeons and kicking soccer balls. Despite a few minutes of wandering around looking for a place for lunch, it was a lovely mid-day.
Our afternoon plans were to visit Caldea Spa, the largest spa centre in Southern Europe. They have four spas in there, and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays no kids allowed. Overall, it was …
We visited the Inúu spa, which features a “great interior lagoon” with thermal waters (91 degrees) that develop into waterfalls, powerful water jets for massages and bubble beds. You can walk or swim outside, too. And, sure, it’s late winter in the mountains, but the water was warm. Also, the sun, the clean air, the views of the mountains that surround you, and the jacuzzi.
There was also a gym, a “treatments space,” and a relaxation spa, all of which we skipped. We did take part in the “reactivation space,” which offers a “complete set of services that awaken your senses.” There was a sauna, heated walls and chromatic showers at different pressures and temperatures.
We stayed for five hours. It was, as the building promised, ssspaaactacular.
Strictly because it is colorful, this is the underside of the elevated sidewalk going into the spa, which sits in the center of the valley, in the heart of Andorra la Vella.
I don’t know how often I would go to a place like this if it was near me, but I’m sure I’d find a way to add it into some sort of routine. “If anyone needs me,” I said I would say, “I’ll be at my spa.”
It was a wonderful day, a relaxing vacation day. The only problem with Constitution Day was that we had limited meal choices. Since the big city was shut down, we drove back up to Arinsal, where we are staying, because we knew Surf was serving.
Surf is where we had dinner Sunday night, the Argentinian steakhouse.
When you’re in a steakhouse, you should consider a steak which, for whatever reason, neither of us did Sunday. When you’re in an Argentinian steakhouse, you should absolutely order steaks. They were sssteaaakctacular.
