Andorra 9/23/13

after watching the castleres on sunday,  we rented a car and drove aprox 150 miles to the pricipality of Andorra.  Andorra is a very small (maybe 50 square miles), land-locked, principality, situated in the Pyrenees mountains between spain and france.  it is a duo-monarchy.  i only learned of it's existanc a few months ago.  a whole country between spain and france that i did not know existed .  so much for high school geography.  a few hundred years ago several monarchs in the area could not decide who would rule andorra.  so they agreed that it would be ruled by two people/positions, the current bishop of andorra, and the current president of france.  that makes a democratically elected president of france, a monarch.  interesante.  andorra is always neutral during war, so it was very  important to the french resistance during the WW's, and much like Switzerland, it's a place the stash cash.  andorra's main source of income is tourism.  the city's (there are only a few) are giant outdoor shopping malls.  seriously, we crossed the border, drove a few miles to the capital, which turned out to be miles of stores on every street we drove on.  i have never seen anything like it.  I've been to malls, but this one never stopped.  people like to shop here because it has a low tax rate, but prices were pretty high, at least to me they were.  so you may pay less tax on the higher priced items you buy.  the only real savings i saw was on smoking products and alcohol.   i saw at least 150 shops that sold tobacco and liquor.  so i loaded up on smokes and drink. ya baby.  being in a valley, as soon as you leave the city you are in the mountains.  during the winter skiers flock here to ski the Pyrenees.  this was the off season, so there were plenty of vacancies.  we did enjoy a nice hotel with a great mountain view about 5 minutes out of the city. on the way home we stopped to check out some very cool sunflower fields, and a then drove up a very steep road to about 8000 ft to visit famous mountain monastery.  it was very nice but flooded with tourists. i am not sure what their current mission is?