THE LAST HURRAH OF SUMMER
/We just got home from an impromptu three-day trip to Andorra, a place I'm pretty sure I never thought about visiting because I'm pretty sure I never thought about it, period.
The country (okay, fine, "principality") of Andorra is nestled between the French and Spanish borders in a landlocked 180-square-mile plot of Pyrenees. It's the only country in the world whose national language is Catalan (though pro-independence Spanish Catalans hope to change that) and despite its proximity to France, more people there speak both Spanish and Portuguese than French. Locals here quickly write it off as "basically just Catalonia" that provides no reason to visit other than skiing or shopping, but given that it's only 125 miles away from Barcelona, we decided to give it a shot.
We got in the car (oh yeah, we bought a funky diesel Euro-mobile a couple weeks ago) and headed northward on Tuesday afternoon. DJ Owen's musical selection, Jackson 5's Christmas album (start to finish, don't-assume-he's-not-paying-attention-and-try-to-fast-forward), got us in the mood for mountains, even if we're still several months (and 40 degrees) away from winter. Aaron found a fantastic ski resort on booking.com that's just as charming in the heat of summer and provides lovely views of lush green ski slopes. We spent Wednesday riding gondolas up and down the mountain and practicing our chairlift dismounts. On Thursday, we took a 5.5 mile hike (we are proud of/still in shock that our kids can/will walk that far sans complete meltdown) and then traded off kid duty and time at the spa.
Now we're back in Barcelona, waiting and wishing for the return of all the city's inhabitants. It's hard to convey just how quiet (and frankly, how desolate) Barcelona's residential areas feel in August; streets that are crazy busy 11 months of the year are completely Boston-in-a-blizzard empty for four straight weeks. Shops are still closed and our favorite bread store went on baking hiatus for the month, so we're looking forward to life resuming.
