Anyways, the morning started off fantastic but after an hour or so we were up in the clouds with occasional glimpses of blue skies or views.
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| Guess what? More cows.. |
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| El pueblo blanco de Treveléz |
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| End of the trail, Alto del Chorillo |
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| Clouds covering what would be a view of the big ones (Mulhacén and others) |
Capped off the day again with some pizza and vino. The next day (Wednesday) we had some time to kill before catching the bus back to Granada. We spent the early afternoon reading up on another trail with a view of Treveléz before heading back into town to ship on back to Granada for the night. Treveléz treated us fantastically for the three nights we were there.
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| Nick reading |
We arrived in Granada to some light rain. At the hostel we were informed about 4 euro seafood paella dinner. I wish I had a picture of it being cooked. It was in three foot diameter pan that had Nick salivating ready to pounce on his share- he was second in line and crushed his generously portioned plate in mere minutes as we were in a rush to make it to the Alhambra for our allotted ticket time. I´ll have you know Nick´s paella devouring episode parallels any story concerning Mark´s legendary ability to shovel food down (minus the mac´n cheese incident).
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| Not us, but demonstrates the size of the paella dish |
So after the Alhambra we went back to the hostel with the following plans for the rest of the trip: a flight to Barcelona early Thursday morning. Nothing else booked.
We went through our options and realized that our original idea to go to a National Park wasn´t going to work out with the bus schedules. We proceeded to throw ideas out in the air. One of them was the country of Andorra. Vaguely fascinated from having both read this Rolf Potts travel article a few years back, we jumped on the idea. We saw that people did actually live in this country and that hostels existed in its capital, although none of them had websites to book ahead with or check rates. Then we found that there was a bus that goes from Barcelona to Andorra. Then we just went to sleep cos we were flat out tired.
The next morning we rose early to make our flight to Barcelona, semi-sure of our plan to make it to Andorra. After figuring out logistics, we determined the bus to Andorra really did exist and that we really did want to go to Andorra for the rest of the trip. I fell asleep for most of the ride but woke up as we approached the mountains that make up the area around Andorra. Finally we hit customs, passed right through, and were in the tiny little nation between France and Spain. I first impression was that Andorra was stuck in 2009 as the Andorran radio station played every song that made the summer of 2009 what it was.. and by that I mean Black Eyed Peas "I´ve Gotta Feelin" pretty much on repeat (I heard it several times, trust me).
The lady at the tourism office was super helpful and provided us with great information about accommodations, as well as maps and bus schedules for the entire country (not that big, remember). It was imperative we made sure we had somewhere to stay that night so we decided to take care of that immediately.. immediately after a celebratory "wow I can´t believe we´re actually in Andorra" beer.
The first hostel we tried was a great success. Real cheap in a great location. Success. Next on the list was to contact Micaela to try and persuade her to come join us in Andorra for the weekend. We ended up calling internationally from a pay phone as our cell phones didn´t work. After reminding her it was Nick´s birthday on Saturday, she told us there was an 80 percent chance she would come. We told her we would be waiting at the bus station the next day at 7pm.
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| Andorra La Vella |
-Michael
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