Living the Andorrable life

During our orientation in September, the Madrid Fulbrighters had the pleasure of meeting the Andorran Fulbrighters. Since we haven't seen them for a few weeks, my friend Justin and I decided to pay them a visit during our first 4 day weekend. In case you haven't heard of Andorra (which a lot of people haven't) it is a small country located in the Pyrenees between France and Spain. So as you can imagine, it is basically like living within Yosemite Valley, but in Europe. The main activities include hiking and shopping. So that is exactly what we did (minus the shopping).

After our 12 hours bus ride from Madrid to Barcelona to Andorra, we walked around Andorra la Vella, which is the capital of the country. To give you a sense of the capital's size, it takes 20-30 minutes to walk from one end of the city to the other and only has 22,000 people. Nevertheless the town is incredibly adorable (thus the Andorran Fulbrighters use the phrase Andorrable to describe everything). On Saturday we hiked for about 5-6 hours and actually hiked INTO FRANCE. The pile of rocks below is the border between Andorra and France. They don't seem to have the strictest border patrol...

As we walked into France, we scouted a good spot to have lunch and enjoy the view. Unfortunately we did not get a passport stamp, but we did meet some Germans who were hiking into Andorra from France. Before we met them, we thought the water was too cold to swim due to the fact that it was 50-60 degrees outside. However they had been hiking for a couple of days and desperately needed a shower, so they took a dip into Arctic waters to freshen up a bit.

On Sunday, we took another yet shorter hike. It was cool, but not nearly as cool as hiking into France.   After some cheese and chocolate fondue, many Andorrable moments, and a whooooole lot of walking, Justin and I returned to Madrid absolutely exhausted. Still, it was good to know that Europe isn't all big buildings and busy streets. There is still some natural beauty left in this history continent.