Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - Lourdes to Barcelona

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Today largely consisted of a driving day from Lourdes to Barcelona, driving part way through Andorra and over and through the Pyrenees along the way. The term "Through the Pyrenees" is well chosen, since we went through several tunnels more than kilometer long, several kilometers in some cases. Grades of 6% to 11% were not uncommon, up and down.

Our visit to Andorra was mostly just to briefly see it and say we had been there. Andorra is the 6th smallest country in the world, and has a fairly unique form of government derived from historical precedents. It has an elected government, but is also a co-principality, with the President of France and the Bishop of Urquell (Barcelona) both being the ex-officio princes. It seems to be principally a skiing community now, and everywhere there are new ski lodges being built. We went part way through the country, saw that the scenery was not going to change much, and turned around and went back into France to cross into Spain another way.

From there, the drive into Barcelona was rather featureless except for the highly eroded mountains of Montserrat. We bid farewell to our diesel station wagon at the airport and headed into towm for dinner at Inopia, a 20 course tapas extravaganza. Mario Batagli has not steered us wrong yet.

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