I’m not sure if I had ever heard of the country of Andorra before we moved to
Holland. It’s no wonder, really, as this small principality in the middle of the
Pyrenees mountains has little to recommend it to overseas visitors. Europeans,
on the other hand, flock to Andorra for the tax free shopping and cheap skiing
in the winter. Unfortunately, we learned the hard way just how many Europeans
there are who think tax free shopping is ”The Business” ….

From Barcelona, we decided to take a detour and drive through Andorra on our way
north. Andorra presented an opportunity to visit another European country, but
more importantly, we thought it would be an incredibly beautiful drive through
some of the best mountain scenery in the Pyrenean range. Boy, were we wrong! A
few kilometers before the Andorran border we found ourselves in the middle of an
intense traffic jam that didn’t let up. Caravans, motorcycles, cars from every
Euro country and more seemed to have descended on Andorra from every direction.
It took an hour just to get 5km into the Country where we promptly stopped in
the first town we could find for lunch.

From what we saw, Andorra seemed nice enough, but very touristy. We enjoyed a
wonderful lunch special at a fabulous French-Italian-Spainishy type place, but
in the end we decided to turn around and back track the way we came rather than
fighting the traffic. It just wasn’t worth it.