Completing my collection - Journey to my final European countries - Day 1

Sept 28th, 2018

It’s been a year of great change and trying to recover financially so travel has had to go on the back burner for the last 6 months. As things are a bit better now, I feel ok to take the time and spend the money to travel a bit. I did use 60,000 AA skymiles to buy my ticket to Barcelona, plus $52. That helped secure my decision to make this journey.

I know how to travel on the cheap but its that big flight that must be dealt with. I use my AA credit card to pay for everything I can and it usually gets me 3 tickets a year (Central America, Caribbean, and Northern South America. This year will be 2 tickets, Barcelona and then St. Kitts and Nevis in December. This is still amazing...love it.

Anyway, my journey begins. I’m in NYC and awaiting my flight to Barcelona with great anticipation. Let’s go!

I was able to sleep for about 5 of the 7 1/2 hour flight. It wasn’t restful but it was sleep. We arrived about 30 minutes early and I was even through customs and immigration in less than 15 minutes. I had a bit of a hunt for a cash machine but I was just looking in the wrong place.

At the Sixt counter I had my first of the day’s dramas. I had filled out the paperwork on the app to make the check in easy, license, passport, and credit card. The representative asked for all of that anyway ??? She told me that my license wasn’t legal and that I needed an international license. This was the first I’ve ever heard of this. I have a Dutch license that will expire in October but didn’t bring it.

She said that it was the only European country to require it and it was required for only a few countries (American, Brits, Aussies...you get the picture. She said that the reason was these nationalities tend to rack up more bills than others and not pay. What???

She said that Sixt would rent me the car but if I was stopped, the police would not allow me to continue to drive the car and would fine me $1000 Euro. I was in shock. I’ve never had such a thing come up before...ever.

I was determined, as I always am, so I walked to the car with keys in hand. I was very nervous.

I set the GPS and headed out. Very soon I determined that something was terribly wrong. The verbal directions were guiding me to...I don’t know where. The nav screen didn’t seem to match up with the surroundings. I found myself almost in Barcelona city center and no where to stop.

I did turn around and head the opposite direction on the highway. I finally decided that I must turn on the phone and use my data to figure this out. I have a $10 a day travel rate and hoped this would not eat up my data.

Google maps guided me north and away from Barcelona. I had wasted an hour of time with this mess. So now I was much later than planned and waiting for the police to really make this a bad day,

The view headed northeast was amazing. The gateway to the Pyrenees was a wonderful morning drive, THEN...I had to stop for a toll booth, there was no person and it wanted €4. I had no change and it wouldn’t take me credit or debit card. Cars were behind me, ugh. They finally backed up and went to another booth and I backed my way out of there so I could turn around and go somewhere to get change. Twenty minutes later and a Powerade purchase to get me change and I headed back to the toll booth. This was another 30 minutes wasted.

Hmmm...as you can see I'm in the mountains and not in the Mediteranean Sea

There were several points where there were police beside the road and my heart was beating so fast. One was for construction and the other was an accident. I kept my fingers crossed.

There were several tunnels along the way, many quite long. One was almost 3 miles long. Wow!

Google maps said that it had found a route that was 5 minutes faster...so I took it, big mistake.

I went off the highway and through rural towns. One of them near the French border got me so turned around that I wasted another 30 minutes getting my self out. It was a small village...grrr.

Just outside the village, GPS had me make a turn on to a very small street/dirt road. I question this but I did it anyway. This led to my crossing the French countryside on a one lane road for about 45 minutes. Now, I’ve done this long enough to know better, what’s wrong with me? This was insane, I took a picture of the road I was driving on just so people can see how insane that it was.

Finally turning off of this world French Road, I entered Andorra. I’ll send it quickly and the Pyrenees and all of their grandeur before me. I had to stop and take a few shots of the mountains with a bit of cloud clinging to them.

I forgot to tell you that at the French quarter, border guards were there. This surprised me as I have driven much of Europe during my time there and cents and borders have all been taken down. Going from Spain to France I was monitored by military but only had to drive slow through the Crossing. From France into Spain, they were being stopped. The line was very very long to get into Spain. I don’t know what’s going on between France and Spain but this was very surprising.

I was making my way through the twisties of Southern Andorra when I was faced with a sight that I knew. I’d found Sant Joan de Caselles Church. It’s one of the places I wanted to visit.

The church of San Joan de Caselles is one of the 3 Romanesque jewels of Andorra, along with the churches of Santa Coloma and La Cortinada.

It is on the way out of Canillo to France, alongside an ancient road and dates back to between the 11th and 12th centuries. Sant Joan de Caselles follows the typical architectural layout of the Romanesque churches in Andorra: rectangular nave with wooden roof, semi-circular apse and Lombardian style bell tower. It has two porches, probably built in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Inside there are the remains of a stucco Romanesque Majesty of the 12th century surrounded by a mural pictorial scene representing the crucifixion with Longinus and Stephanus accompanied by the Sun the Moon. An altarpiece by Miquel Ramells and Gui de Borgonyó sits behind the rood screen, there is a 16th century altarpiece of great artistic quality with influences of the Italian and German Renaissance depicting scenes of the life and martyrdom of Saint John, the author of the Apocalypse and patron saint of the church.

Another 30 minute drive hire into the mountains and I had reached the capital, Andorra de la Vella. It’s the city of only about 25,000 people talked in Ohio Valley with structures overflowing into the surrounding mountainside. I can’t say that it’s a beautiful town, because it’s not. It’s surroundings are beautiful but it’s just a place where people come to buy things.

I made my round of the city several times before finding parking… That is quite the nightmare here.

Fortunately my hotel was very close, that was a happy accident on such a rough day. Check it was easy and my room had a balcony or I could see mountains on both sides… Kind of nice. The bed is big and comfy and the room is actually large by European standards.

I showered and then headed out to see what this town is all about. I walked the pedestrian way, filled with shops that could be anywhere in the world. The options for food seem to be repetitious and of the touristy type which was very disappointing.

On a bright note there is amazing sculpture at every square, truly amazing. There was a metal sculpture of a woman’s face that another one of a woman’s face and torso dressed in a gown... like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

It started to rain and so I huddled under a canopy for quite some time. When it settles I stopped into a café and had a fruit tart. It was overflowing with fruit and of many different tropical types so that was nice. The flavor was good and not too sweet, just like I like it. I wrote a bit as I sat there and it rained on and off, a good place to just sit.

I had it out and was still hungry. I read a few of the menus but nothing sounded good. Whatever I feel this way I will go to McDonald’s and get some french fries which is just what I did. I headed back to the room as it started to rain once more.

With my car rental issue fresh in my head, I decided to look over my rental agreement for the car in Belarus. As I read some conflicting information I decided to try and call. It seems that there is no one to speak to on a corporate level on the weekend and I wasn’t able to get my phone to connect to the phone number provided in Belarus. From what I did read I don’t think I will be able to rent a car there. I canceled my reservation and then I canceled my room in the village Mir.

This is all very disappointing but at this late date there’s nothing I can do about it. I must reassess and move forward. My hotel in Minsk is not available for the other two nights so now I’m looking at other options for the three nights. There are fortunately a lot of options to be considered so that won’t be a problem. My hotel in Minsk is not available for the other two nights so now I’m looking at other options for the three nights. There are fortunately a lot of options to be considered so that won’t be a problem

. Now about my castle the visits in the countryside, not sure what to do. I can take a tour and see both of them in one day but not really spend the time that I planned, that’s one option. I can also try and find someone who I could hire to take me out there each of the days and enjoy the whole day there. I don’t know what that might cost me but if it’s less than $100 then it would equal the rental and gas. Ugh😑

Oh it to a café down the street, in the rain there seems to be never ending at this point, I have had a wonderful veggie wrap on spelt flat bread, and apparatus brats, and a wonderful very dense small piece of cheesecake. They had carrot cake on the menu and asked about cream cheese frosting The waitress did not speak English very well but I tried to explain that it’s normally used on bagels and then she understood. She would asked and they did not make the icing with cream cheese. When she brought me a piece of cheesecake the chef had come up with something special for me. He had two tiny chocolate cookies and in the middle he had put some sweetened cream cheese and asked for me to try it. It was amazing. That was so nice of them to do that for me.