Andorra, a country at high pass in the Pyrenees

Culturally flavored by Spain, it's a place where people stay up late and know how to party.

By Susan Spano, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
04:11 PM PDT, September 26, 2008

Small countries of Europe: Andorra

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Outside a church on my first morning in Andorra, I met a dapper man who looked about 60 and was wearing a suit coat with a silk handkerchief in the front pocket. He noticed that I was trying to read my map upside down and asked whether he could help.

After we'd talked for a while he asked me how old I thought he was. The average life expectancy in Andorra is 83, so I figured this was a trick question. But before I could come up with an answer he did a little twist and said he was 93. Then he pulled out his driver's license to prove it.

If first impressions are everything, he's the reason I took a shine to Andorra, but I found many others during my visit. Though locked in the mountains like Liechtenstein, Andorra is three times bigger, so there's more to see. And these mountains are the Catalonian Pyrenees, culturally flavored by Spain, where people stay up late and know how to party.

FOR THE RECORD:

Encamp, Andorra: In a Sept. 28 Travel section article about the small countries of Europe, a town in Andorra was called Encampin. It is Encamp. —

Andorra lines a high pass in the Pyrenees between France and Spain. I drove in from the north, noting the long line of cars headed in the opposite direction, stalled at a customs booth on the French border, where officials were opening trunks to inspect the loads of purchases leaving Andorra, a tax-free shopping mecca.

Pas de la Casa, the first town I came to, has a duty-free mall, like those in airports, and two route options for people going onward: a long, toll tunnel or the switchbacking road I chose that crosses the 7,900-foot Envalira Pass before plunging into Andorra.

From there, the highway follows a branch of the Valira River past a chain of ski resorts, a hydroelectric plant and the monstrous, pinnacle-shaped Caldea spa complex to the nation's capital, Andorra la Vella, a densely packed modern city in a widening of the valley.

The Hotel Pyrénées, where I booked a room for three nights, is in the upper town. It's clean, efficient and friendly and has a beautiful swimming pool on the roof of an adjacent parking structure.

I took a dip and then went for a walk in the old town, a small district of stone buildings surrounding Casa de la Vall, which was Andorra's administrative center when it was co-ruled by the Spanish bishop of Urgell and the French king.

Technically, the bishop and the president of France remain its co-princes, but Andorra now has a democratically elected parliament and ministries in modern buildings below the nearby Piazza of the People.

Beyond that, Andorra la Vella seemed to me chiefly a conglomeration of shopping malls that attract day-trippers from France and Spain seeking tax-free luxury goods such as perfume and watches. The summer sales were on, but even so, things seemed expensive, except for shoes, which is why I had to find room in my suitcase for two new pairs of sandals.

One night I had charbroiled chicken at an Argentine barbecue near my hotel. The next night I found Ca la Conxita, a restaurant decorated like a Hallmark Halloween card, which serves local fare without a menu. The owner sat at my table and told me what she could prepare. I chose steak, followed by a watermelon slice.

It was easy to fill my days in Andorra visiting such historic sites as Casa Cristo, which occupies a four-story farmhouse left as it was when the family that lived there moved from the hamlet Encampin in 1947.

It is an ethnographic museum dedicated to the old days, when Andorra produced tobacco for snuff. A few fields nearby are still devoted to big-leafed, pink-flowering tobacco plants, now used for cigarettes.

Every little town seems to have an old Romanesque chapel built of rough stone in the Middle Ages. My favorite, in the village of Santa Coloma just south of the capital, has a round bell tower and traces of Gothic frescoes.

The restored ruins of another cherished Andorran chapel are on a hillside in Meritxell, where legend has it that an image of the Virgin Mary appeared miraculously. When the chapel burned in 1972, a striking new sanctuary was built.

Farther north at Arcalis I hiked to Tristaina Lake, set in a scree-covered cirque, where I sat eating a sandwich, despairing of the march of the clock but appreciating the view. So little time, so many small countries to see.

susan.spano@latimes.com