​Trip Photos here or here

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Since my HPV-induced tongue-base cancer in 2010, I’ve realized what “they” always say: If you want to do something, do it now, as you may not get another chance. Of course I recognize that some things will have to be left for another lifetime – or for someone else’s lifetime.

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But I’ve long fantasized about traveling around France with Ellinor in a small camper. So when I was invited to discuss copy editing with graduate students (in economics, management, and law) at the Université d’Auvergne in Clermont-Ferrand, I decided not to return home immediately, but rather to go exploring.

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I’ve been to Paris several times, and to many other major French cities at least once (many 29 years ago on a Eurail Pass), so I wanted to get out in the countryside. Unfortunately Ellinor didn’t feel able to leave home for more than a few days, so she didn’t go along.

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Distant Dutch relatives
I have distant Dutch relatives in the Netherlands I wanted to see – so I booked a flight to Amsterdam on the morning of Saturday April 20. Since I was not sure how long I’d be away, I left my return open, but tentatively booked a rental car there for 16 days (through three weekends).

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I often bake “orange bread” – which my mother’s family also called snipper koek (cake) but is more widely known as Deventer koek – according to a recipe which has been passed down from my Hospers ancestors (my mother’s mother was born Hospers). The Hospers came from the small town of Vriezenveen near Deventer.

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A modern Dutch Hospers relative (a 7th cousin once removed) lives in Deventer. I’d never met him – though they were in Göteborg during my cancer treatments three years ago and, being too considerate to call when I was too far down even to talk with them, sent me a huge bouquet instead. I asked him if I could come visit. And, naturally, I planned to take them a loaf of my Deventer cake (as well as a box of Swedish Aladdin chocolates).

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A Dutch van der Linden relative (a 5th cousin whom I’d met once before) lives in Breukelen (after which Brooklyn, NY, was named), and I also wanted to visit her and her family. Since I didn’t want to carry her cake and chocolates around in the possibly hot car for two weeks, I visited her in Breukelen briefly to drop them off on the way to Deventer, and made plans to visit again at the end of the trip.

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Ancestral Hospers stomping grounds: Deventer and Vriezenveen
After a quick lunch, Wout Hospers and his partner Betsie took me for a tour of the historic core of Deventer, a very special city with an annual book fair, a stilt festival, and a Dickens festival, all of which sound like a lot of fun. Naturally, we stopped for refreshments at the Deventer Koek shop!

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Then – at my suggestion, thinking it was just outside of town, though actually it’s about an hour away – they took me to see the ancestral village of Vriezenveen, where we found lots of Hospers headstones in the cemetery as well as “Springs Fashion by Hospers”, a clothing store with three adjacent buildings on the main street. Residential areas were decorated with hundreds of flags in the Dutch colors (red, white, and blue!) celebrating the upcoming (April 30th) abdication of beloved Queen Beatrix and the coronation of her son (now King) Willem-Alexander.

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We ended the day with dinner at a wonderful restaurant, where a car painted like a Dutch cow (white with large black spots) was parked out front. I was impressed with the wash “basin” in the restroom, which wasn’t round but rather like a valley with a dam at the outer end. When I mentioned it to Wout, he encouraged me to take a picture (with the camera on my GPS). Pictures from the trip are available here.

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Driving in France
Other than my GPS – which doesn’t give directions, but just let’s me see where I am – I had no good map of France, so Wout & Betsie lent me a large Michelin map of southern France, which proved to be a godsend. After breakfast on Sunday I headed for Clermont-Ferrand, at least 9 hours of driving on the fastest roads (including toll roads).

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To improve my Swedish, I’ve been reading crime novels in Swedish, including (recently) some by Håkan Nesser, so Ellinor had gotten from the library a “talking book” by Nesser, six CDs, which I listened to several times while driving long stretches. In France I was surprised to realize how much French came back to me, from high school and college French (which I could never speak but, at one point – with a dictionary – I could translate). Sometime it would be fun to travel in France again and listen to French at the same time – but this time it was Swedish.

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In Sweden it’s required to drive with one’s headlights on even during daytime, a safety measure I’ve been aware of since experiencing it as an experiment in Alberta in 1963. But in France – judging from the many cars who flashed their lights at me to tell me that my lights were on – it seems to be unknown. It’s not that my lights were on high-beam, because no one flashed at me at night – except for once when I had actually switched to high-beam and forgot to turn them down for an approaching vehicle.

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At Lille (France) I realized that I was nearly out of gas, and tried several “automat” stations (found with help of the GPS) which, however, would not take my VISA debit card. In desperation I flagged down a passing bicyclist, a young man who spoke sufficient English to understand the problem and drew me a very complicated – but accurate – map that got me to a larger station with an attendant where I could provide my signature to authorize the VISA charge. (I had the same problem throughout the trip: Automat stations never accepted my U.S. VISA card.)

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The copy-editing presentation in Clermont-Ferrand
Having finally refilled with gas, I celebrated with a liter of caramel ice cream for lunch. Traffic around Paris was terrible, about 5:00 on Sunday afternoon, but – after creeping for about an hour – it started moving again, and I reached Clermont-Ferrand by 10. One of the friendly young African men who checked me into the academic hotel told me that he would be attending my presentation the next day.

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The professor who had invited me – and two of her colleagues – came to the hotel at noon and we walked to a nearby restaurant in a park where we had a lovely outdoor lunch. I drank naturally-carbonated soda water – of the brand that was once shipped to the royal court for the pleasure of the king! (Since radiation treatments in 2010, I haven’t been able to drink alcohol more than about 2%, because it burns my mouth.) I meant to keep the soda-water bottle, but forgot to take it. (I hadn’t even known that soda water could be naturally carbonated!)

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We checked the computer-projector and copied my PowerPoint presentation for distribution to the 20-25 students who attended, so they could follow along more easily. I showed and discussed actual editing of a few papers (including one by one of the students in attendance), as well as discussing lots of general points from my little Stylebook which I had asked the students to read. The session seemed to go well. Afterwards I had a dinner crepe and then a dessert crepe near the cathedral in the center of the old city.

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Trip planning
Since I didn’t have Ellinor to share the trip with, I concentrated after that on seeing and doing as much as possible (which I would have been tempted to do anyway, but she would have resisted, and the trip would have been more relaxed). Ever since my sister visited Andorra in the 1960s I’ve wanted to go there, so I had set that as my southern goal after Clermont-Ferrand.

I had read Lonely Planet’s guidebook France and made a list of all the places in the western half of the country that I might like to visit on the way down to Andorra or back to the Netherlands (especially out towards the coast). I ended up with a 2-page list (including page numbers in the Lonely Planet book) which, for reference along the way, I had printed both alphabetized and in page-order.

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I spent the Monday afternoon before the copy-editing workshop reviewing this list and sketching out possible stops to the south. Since it was going to be cold in the mountains and I wouldn’t want to camp, I booked the following Saturday and Sunday nights at a youth hostel in Andorra, and I scheduled a tour of the Airbus factory in Toulouse (which had to be booked ahead of time) for Friday afternoon. That gave me more than 3 days to get to Toulouse.

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I also arranged with cousin Janie to see her and her family the following Sunday back in Breukelen, which would give me 6 days after Andorra to get back to the Netherlands. Then I asked Ellinor to look for the least expensive way for me to get home from Amsterdam after that. In the coming days she followed up with suggestions by SMS (text) message via cell phone.

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Michelin
After breakfast on Tuesday – since Michelin (which produces tires and many other things) is headquartered in Clermont-Ferrand – I visited their fascinating museum. There, among other things, I learned about rubber from tree to tire, and about an early bicycle race (still run) from Paris to Brest (in western Brittany) and back, which resulted in creation of a special celebratory Paris-Brest pastry (you’ll discover that I’m especially interested in pastries! Sorry I didn’t think to take pictures of any…).

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Volcanoes
The iconic landmark for Clermont-Ferrand is Puy de Dôme, an extinct volcano quite visible from the city. (Puy means “top” in the Occitan language which is spoken in southern France and neighboring areas.) There’s a well-built, well-maintained trail to the top, so – joining a few hundred others that day – I spent a couple hours hiking up and back. At the top there’s an ancient Roman temple to Mercury and a view (when it’s clear) all the way to Mont Blanc in the Alps.

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That area (the Massif Central) all being ancient volcanic territory, I had hoped to visit a nearby exhibition park called Vulcania, but I got there just after the last entrance time. I drove towards Limoges, stopping after a couple hours at a restaurant with a sign on the street advertising a dinner special. It was 6:30 pm, but too early for dinner, I was told. I got pizza instead and – especially since we’d had a very late, cold spring in Sweden – enjoyed eating at a sunny table in front.

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Mistletoe
Spring had been late in France too – trees were still leafing out – though they (and flowers) were ahead of Göteborg. All over France I saw the “skeletons” of trees – still leafing out – with masses that looked like huge green bird nests scattered among them: mistletoe! I tried to get some down a couple of times, but couldn’t reach high enough (and anyway, I didn’t have anyone to kiss).

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Oradour-sur-Glane and the Resistance
About dusk I drove around Limoges and out to Oradour-sur-Glane, the site of a German massacre (190 men, 247 women, 205 children) in June 1944, just a few days after the Allied landings at Normandy. The Germans were known for reprisals against anyone harboring or cooperating with Resistance forces, but they seem to have confused this village with another (Oradour-sur-Vayres) where a Waffen-SS officer had recently been captured.

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The destroyed village has been maintained as a memorial ever since the War – with an extensive museum underground (so as not to detract from the village itself). Since it was late, I briefly explored the adjacent modern village, then drove past the cemetery and found a nearby hayfield where I could camp in a corner, some distance from the nearest road, shielded by trees. My tent goes up quickly, and I was quite comfortable (and happy to save lodging costs).

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In the morning I had French breakfast (baguette, croissant, butter, jam, juice, and café au lait) at a nearby hotel, then visited the excellent museum and the destroyed village. My only complaint – both here and later at the Resistance Museum in Limoges – was that the excellent audio guides refer to exhibit numbers which are hard to find. (I have emailed to both museums to suggest that they make the numbers larger and perhaps protruding from the wall, to make them easier to spot. It was exasperating to waste valuable time looking for exhibit numbers rather than enjoying the wonderful exhibits.)

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Truffle walk
After the Resistance Museum in Limoges – and a few pastries (!) for lunch at a nearby pâtisserie – I drove south to the Truffle Museum in Sorges. Truffles are underground fungi, not like any mushrooms I’m familiar with, fairly hard black balls like little dark potatoes. After buying some truffle vinegar (for our daughter Linnéa, who likes to try vinegars for salads) and a few other local products (dried morels and walnut-flour pasta), I did the nearby 3-kilometer truffle walk, not to see truffles (which I’d seen at the museum, and this was not the season for finding them anyway), but to see the country and the types of trees with which they grow symbiotically: oak, birch, pine, and hazelnut, among others.

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Truffle dinner
Then I went to Auberge de la Truffe (a hotel and restaurant) to find some truffles to eat. Just a truffle omelet cost about $50, but I decided to go all out with the “truffle menu”:
consommé (thin soup) with grated truffle;
scrambled egg with truffle (artfully shaped), served with
warm foie gras and baked apple with truffle sauce;
truffle slices enclosed in gently grilled scallops;
whole truffles baked in puff-pastry, served with a truffle potato puree (i.e., mashed potatoes);
unlimited choice of cheeses from among 12 sorts; and
for dessert, small portions of
truffle ice cream,
pear compote with truffle,
truffle sabayon, and
upside-down apple pie with truffle caramel.

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This meal – which included 50 grams (less than 2 ounces) of truffles that alone cost over $66 – lasted over 3 hours and cost $146 (€110). Clearly (for me) this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience!

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In order to share the experience with Ellinor (to some small extent), I’m embarrassed to say that I pocketed two tiny serving containers, one a presumably cheap plastic “jug” with a closing latch similar to much larger ones that we have, the other a Limoge china “finger bowl” (Limoge is known for producing china). When they asked if I’d like coffee at the end, I got decaf (instant, powdered) that cost another $2.90, and I felt justified. But my conscience bothered me for the entire rest of the trip, so when I got home I emailed and asked how much the pieces cost so I could pay them.
 

They generously forgave the debt, and also helped me translate the menu (above), since I only had it in French.

I have to admit, as much as I enjoyed the experience – and it was interesting to experience the texture of the truffles – tastewise you could have fooled me with Campbell’s mushroom soup.

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Pigs vs. dogs
Of course it wasn’t even possible to order dinner until 7 pm, so I wrote a postcard to Ellinor while waiting, with a picture of hunting for truffles with a pig. Apparently (I read later, in my big mushroom book) truffles put out a scent like pig sex-hormones, so pigs are naturally attracted to them – but it’s also hard to keep the pigs from eating the truffles when they find them. Pigs also get tired easily (I read) and thus have to be carried to and from the target area – which produces quite a picture in my mind!. On the other hand, dogs don’t naturally like truffles, but – with their keen sense of smell – can be trained to find them, and may be easier to work with. Besides, I’d rather carry a dog than a pig, any day.

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Tenting by moonlight
By the time the lengthy truffle dinner was finished it was about 10:30 and quite dark, but I headed southeast (on country roads) towards the Vézère Valley, an area of limestone caves with prehistoric paintings that I wanted to visit the next day. After half an hour I spotted a large picnic area along the River L’Isle, where I found a lovely spot to camp away from any traffic. The full moon made setting up the tent easy.

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Breakfast in a bar
The next morning I drove a ways to Thenon – a small town along the highway – where I had breakfast at a bar (and mailed my pig postcard at the little post office across the street). In a separate room of the bar – near the restroom – there was a small but tempting lunch buffet (some of which looked as though it should have been refrigerated, however). But when I asked about eating some of that, I was told that that was for lunch, now it’s time for breakfast. So I was given a croissant, some baguette, and jam – which I had also had the day before and the two days before that. (I snatched a small éclair from the lunch buffet when returning from the restroom, and my conscience didn’t bother me about that.)

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Prehistoric cave paintings
I drove to Montignac to get tickets to Lascaux II, an amazing replica of two of the main “halls” of the nearby Lascaux cave which contains fantastic Paleolithic paintings from about 17,300 years ago. The original, discovered in 1940, was closed to the public already in 1963 because of the deterioration that visitors were causing to the paintings.

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After an hour with a tour, wondering at the remarkable paintings in the replica cave, I visited another prehistory center at Le Thot which has a zoo exhibiting many of the animals in the paintings, including a somewhat worse-for-wear “stuffed” mammoth. (Maybe in future they can have live ones.) I misunderstood and thought that the center was going to show something about how Lascaux II was constructed, but it didn’t.

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Fortified troglodyte village
On the way south to my next intended stop I caught sight of caves in limestone cliffs above the river, so I stopped to visit La Roque Saint-Christophe. This troglodyte complex – inhabited off and on for 55,000 years – became, during the Middle Ages, an entire defended fortress village built into the cliffs. One amazing aspect of it was that warnings of approaching danger could quickly be relayed for many miles up or down the river via a series of listening posts.

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The National Prehistory Museum
The touristy but pleasant town of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil has the large National Prehistory Museum with overwhelming displays of early stone tools, etc., and virtually nothing in English, but I happily spent an hour there until chased out by the guards at closing time. Before leaving town I bought a local product that seemed to be sold everywhere, very rich cookies made with lots of walnut flour and eggs.

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Foie gras dinner
Heading on south, I stopped for dinner in the well-preserved medieval city of Sarlat. Since this entire area is known for ducks, geese, and foie gras (duck or goose liver) – which I wasn’t really familiar with (though I had had a bit in the truffle menu) – I decided to try it (which I was later told by Linnéa was very bad, of course, because of the way the birds are force-fed, basically tortured). I expected pâté (i.e., processed), but this was thin slices of liver, fatty and spreadable like butter on bread.

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Since the radiation treatments I’ve had virtually no saliva, meaning that I have to drink lots of water with bread to moisten it, but I enjoyed my dinner of foie gras and bread (and salad). Incidentally, in Italy at Christmas we had found that restaurants would not serve tap water, but one was forced to buy bottled water (or to carry one’s own, which we mostly did). But in France there was never a problem with requesting a carafe of tap water, and never a charge for providing it. There was also never a separate charge for bread before or with dinner, as there had usually been in Italy.

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I accepted the waitress’ offer of cheeses for dessert, and found that they came with yet more bread, different from the truffle menu, where (many more kinds of) cheeses had been served by themselves.

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Camping amongst stinging nettles
As it was getting dark, I consulted the GPS to see if there might be a “registered” campsite south of Sarlat, and found several near the Dordogne River. While exploring that area, however, I found a dirt track between some fields which ended up close to the river near where a couple small rowboats were tied up (though I didn’t see that until the next morning). It had turned quite cloudy, so the moon didn’t provide much light, but I got out my headlamp to help in setting up camp. Nevertheless, I soon discovered “by touch” – and confirmed visually in the morning – that one end of the tent was in a patch of stinging-nettle. I got it on my hands while putting in tent-stakes, but it didn’t itch for long, and I slept well.

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The urinals in Domme
In the morning I drove to the magnificent small walled hilltop town of Domme, where for breakfast I had croque-monsieur (grilled ham and cheese sandwich) and squash pie – of which the pâtisserie manager was quite proud, but I (expecting something like pumpkin pie) found it disappointing, neither creamy nor sweet.

I needed a toilet and consulted the GPS, which helpfully showed locations of public facilities. Throughout France I was struck by the casual approach to urinals for men, often visible from the street when the door opened, or even having no door at all. (I took a picture.) Later, in northern France, there was a note in one men’s restroom that wash basins were to be found on the women’s side.

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Engines as big as a normal aircraft fuselage
Still heading south, I stopped for an early crêpe lunch by the bridge in the center of Cahors. As I pulled into a parking space, a friendly driver about to pull his car out of the next space handed me his receipt, so I didn’t have to pay for parking. Then I hurried on towards the Airbus factory northwest of Toulouse, and got confused amongst the interchanges, but still got there just in time.

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The check-in woman told me that the price I had paid was wrong (perhaps I had clicked the “unemployed” box, getting me a €1 discount? But that’s true – I am mostly unemployed -- and she didn’t ask). She also said I had to show my passport (although I’m a Swedish citizen and had checked the EU citizen box, and generally EU citizens are not supposed to need passports even for travel between countries, let alone for a tour). She pointed out that my Swedish driver’s license doesn’t specify my citizenship, and I offered to go out to the car to get my passport. Instead she asked where I was born and – when I said “Iowa” – she said, “U.S.? OK.” And she didn’t worry about the price either. Don’t ask, I didn’t understand, but was happy not to head back to the parking lot, which was a ways away, and it was starting to rain. (Recently I noticed an email that had come back from Airbus – but I hadn’t seen at that time – pointing out that somehow I had entered my birth date on the tour application as though I were 7 years old! So it’s not surprising that she thought there were some problems!)

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This was a tour of how the A-380 is built, with parts coming from Britain, Germany, and Spain, besides France. It’s the largest commercial airliner in the world, wide-body and double-deck for the entire length, capable of carrying 853 passengers if configured all-economy. Its size is deceptive, it doesn’t appear as large as it is. However, its engines are as large as the fuselage of a conventional narrow-body aircraft (i.e., a jet sitting 6-across, with an aisle in the middle).

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Canal du Midi
I wanted to take the underground-river-boat tour at Labouïche on the way to Andorra, but it was too late to get there for the tour that day, so I headed southeast towards the walled city of Carcassonne instead. I took a break to walk a bit along the Canal du Midi, then found pastries (a delicious caramel-apple pie as well as an “elephant ear”) in a small town where the pâtisserie manager kindly agreed to refill my water bottle too.

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Cathars and Carcassonne
Throughout this area there are signs indicating that one is in “Cathar country” – referring to a dualistic medieval fundamentalist Catholic sect that was annihilated during the Crusades (by more orthodox Christians) – and Carcassonne was once a Cathar stronghold. I texted Ellinor asking for information on inexpensive lodgings, preferably in La Cité (i.e., within the walls). She couldn’t tell online whether the youth hostel there had space or not, and they didn’t answer their phone, so eventually I just went there and found that it did.

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I couldn’t get the small computer I was carrying to connect to their WiFi, but enjoyed chatting with a French-American who was considering moving back to France and growing wine-grapes in that area. Incidentally, a run-down hotel on the outskirts of town which I had stopped to check on cost €45 for a single room. But since the hostel was actually not very full, I ended up with a room to myself for only €20 – in the old city besides.

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It was tricky to take the car inside the walls – which I wanted to do since I had a large suitcase inside the car (it wouldn’t fit in the small “trunk”, and I didn’t want to leave it visible, attracting thieves) – but eventually I figured out how to do it, dropped off the suitcase at the hostel, and parked the car, then looked for dinner.

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Tripe soup
I wasn’t too hungry, but – since I saw it on the menu – I wanted tripe soup. I had tried to cook tripe (cow intestines) once during college in Santa Fe, but it turned out rubbery and impossible to eat. Now the tripe was tender, the soup excellent.

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The restaurant was fairly full, however, and didn’t want to give me – a single customer – a table for more than two (and no tables for two were available). Although it was rainy and quite chilly, I offered to eat in the (covered) outside area, so – after making clear what I wanted (tripe soup) – I went there, where there was also one other party. As time dragged on and the other party was waited on, but no soup or anything else arrived for me, I started to wonder if I hadn’t placed my order with the right person, but I couldn’t get the attention of the waitress taking care of the other party. Finally someone brought out my soup – and nothing else. When I then got the waitress’ attention and asked for bread and water to go with the soup, the manager I had first spoken with very apologetically came out with them. And again, no separate charge for bread or water.

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In the ditch
In the morning, on the way southwest towards Andorra, I stopped to take a picture of the fantastic walled city (Carcassonne) across fields of grape vines – and promptly dropped the right two wheels of the car into a ditch hiding in the grass that I thought was a solid shoulder. My little Kia bottomed out on the gravel, so there was no chance I was going to be able to drive out of there.

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First I took the picture I had stopped to take – as well as one of the poor stranded car – then I set about jacking it up in order to try to build up some support under the wheels. I did this once in Alaska during high school, when my father’s truck tilted on an unstable shoulder while I was out hiking. After jacking it up and building up rocks under each wheel, I flagged down a passing state gravel truck. The driver put a chain on my truck and basically yanked me back onto the road. I was hoping something similar might work here.

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Soon an older passing Dane (who lives in that area) stopped to see if he could help, but neither he nor I had a chain or tow-rope, nor shovel. Then a middle-aged (and very gung-ho) Frenchman stopped as well. He was convinced that, if we (old men) pushed, he could drive the car out. He gave it lots of gas, and there was lots of noise and smoke – from the clutch, I believe (not a good sign) – but no motion from the car. We also tried lifting the car, to no avail. Then three young Frenchmen stopped and pushed (while the other Frenchman drove), and the car was out in no time.

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I thanked them all profusely, then headed on down the road – which is when I noticed that, in trying to lift the car, I had sliced open seven fingers and was getting the steering wheel rather bloody. I found a puddle in which to wash off my fingers a bit, then put on some light gloves I happened to have in my pocket and drove on.

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The world’s longest underground boat tour
My next stop was the underground-river tour at Labouïche in the foothills of the Pyrénées north of Andorra. Because the river has been dammed in a few places, boats can travel about 1.5 kilometers, though one has to get out to bypass each dam and then take another boat. Because otherwise it would be impossible to get them into the cave, the aluminum boats – capable of holding about 12 visitors each – were constructed (welded together) inside.

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The amazing thing to me – apart from the beautiful rock formations, of course – was the amount of water rushing through the cave. It fluctuates with rainfall and seasons, and can sometimes be too high to allow passage. However, if, for example, one thinks of the size of the caves at Lascaux, it’s clear that it took lots of water to create them too.

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As I was leaving the gift shop/office afterwards, I asked the manager if he had a band-aid for one particularly badly-cut finger, and he did an excellent job of bandaging it for me, first dripping something in it that must have been anti-bacterial, because it healed up with no pain, redness, swelling, nothing (though there’s a good scar).

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The Count of Foix
That left the other six less-badly sliced fingers, so when I got to the nearby town of Foix and saw a Lidl store, I went in and bought a package of band-aids and bandaged them. Lidl is a German-based international discount supermarket chain, where we also often shop in Göteborg. I took a copy of the weekly ads for Ellinor’s mother – who always checks the ads carefully – and dropped them in her door slot when I got back. Of course these were in French (if not Occitan), but that just made it more fun. Mormor (mother’s mother) Märta never wants purchased gifts – nor anything that she has to keep – but as this cost nothing and she could toss it, she enjoyed it.

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Foix has a very impressive fortified castle – on a high rocky outcrop in the middle of town – which I had stopped to photograph. Then I pushed on to Andorra, higher into the mountains, up into snow country, into falling snow, then through a tunnel under the pass. Andorra seems to basically be a long valley on the southern side of the pass, i.e., a south-flowing watershed, flowing towards Spain. I checked a map carefully later, and the ridge-line (the divide) separating northern and southern watersheds is almost everywhere the border between France and Spain (as one might expect), with two fairly small exceptions (besides Andorra), one west of Andorra where Spain extends over to the northern side, and one east of Andorra where France extends over to the southern side. (Why they don’t swap those two areas and make it more “rational” I don’t know, nor the history that led to these exceptions.)

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Andorra has maintained its independence – such as it is – because, long ago, a deal was reached between the French Count of Foix (where I had just been) and the Spanish bishop of La Seu d’Urgell (where I would go later) that they would jointly manage it. Later a Count of Foix became King of France, since which the French head-of-state and the Bishop of Urgell have been the “co-princes” of the principality of Andorra.

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Down, down, down to Andorra
I followed the valley down, down, down, a long ways, until finally coming to the capital, Andorra la Vella – after which I had to climb again on a road with lots of switchbacks (where I had to gear down into first) to get to the youth hostel. It had even fewer guests than the one in Carcassonne, so again I had a room to myself, and this time the WiFi worked.

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After unpacking what I needed for the night, I drove into town – a glitzy commercial center for tourists, because of tax-free shopping – and found a somewhat inexpensive-looking restaurant, where I had braised duck (a local specialty) and Catalan crème (otherwise known as crème brûlée, a personal favorite). I was of course no longer in France – and sure enough, only bottled water was available (but, fortunately, I had some of my own with me). The manager put a basket of bread on the table at the beginning of the meal, but it showed up separately on the bill at the end.

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My stiff neck
I had thought perhaps to hike in Andorra, but it was cold, and snowing – and I had a headache (perhaps from so much driving). The right side of my neck has been stiff – I think it’s primarily the splenius capitis muscle – ever since we got back from Tunisia in April 2010 (just before my cancer – during treatments for which I forgot all about it!). I’ve since attended lots of stretching sessions at the university, and the stiffness comes and goes, but never disappears entirely.

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My neck stiffened up, generating headaches, when we were driving a lot in Italy at Christmas. After that I had an osteopathic adjustment and lots of massage, both Swedish deep-pressure massage and a rolling Chinese variety called tui-na. Since the stiffness was still pronounced after 12 massage sessions, I started working out a lot – using all the upper-body machines – at a place called Friskis och Svettis (“get frisky and sweat”). That seemed to help, so I thought the stiffness might be gone – but now it had come back.

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So I took Sunday off, only going out in the evening for dinner: black (blood) pudding for appetizer (I also like Swedish blood pudding); broad beans and ham (with shrimp, which, surprisingly to me, were not mentioned on the menu); and, for dessert, “fried milk” (leche frita), which is typical of northern Spain (according to Wikipedia), made by cooking flour with milk and sugar until it thickens to a firm dough which is then portioned, fried, and served with a sugar glaze and cinnamon. Excellent.

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Spain and four passes through the Pyrénées
I had spent Sunday afternoon online, considering routes to Lourdes (my intended next stop) and marking waypoints in the GPS for some stops I wanted to make later, on the way north to the Netherlands. To get to Lourdes – back on the French (north) side of the Pyrénées, but further west – I could circle east, then north, then west back to Foix, then more-or-less straight west from there. But a “more direct” way would be to go south into Spain (to Urgell), then west, north, and west again. (Going really direct, straight west out of Andorra, would have been sure to hit snowed-in passes.) The route through Spain would mean going over four mountain passes instead of just one – and would add at least an hour, despite being slightly shorter – so naturally I chose that one. (I never like to go back the way I came.)

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I filled up with gas before leaving Andorra, even though the tank wasn’t very low, because gas was 25% cheaper there. In Spain – long after I’d turned off the main road heading south, quite a distance from Andorra – I was stopped by the Guardia Civil, who asked if I’d been in Andorra, and what I had bought there – tabaco? I hadn’t bought anything, but they searched the car anyway (perhaps hoping for a bribe?), then apologized and sped off to check on a car I told them about, just up the road, with radiator boiling-over.

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There's more! (click here): North, Lourdes to Amsterdam and then home