Travel day!

We, the royal we, as in i slept very soundly last night. Caron, on the other hand didn't have such a good night. One of the children in the tent next door was a bit sick and coughed and cried most of the night; I didn't hear a thing but it was enough to keep Caron awake so yesterday it was grumpy Roland and today it will be grumpy Caron. We're very glad to part ways with the campsite, it's expensive and not that great but it's the only one relatively near to Barcelona which is open.

A long days travel broken by some welcome breaks. The first part was from Barcelona up to Andorra which I have wanted to visit for some time but I've just never managed to get there. Now I know why, it's not that easy to get to. We stopped for a real lunch, hamburgers for Caron and I had trout which was okay but definitely not what one would expect of a top restaurant; which it wasn't! Andorra seems to specialise in a few businesses; from the shops on the main road through Andorra they would be banking, perfume, electronic goods, fuel, jewelery/watches and of course cigarettes. Basically any goods that would attract large taxes either in France or Spain. The fuel here is 0.78 which is 0.10 cheaper than in spain and 0.25 cheaper than in France so no wonder Andorra is know for smuggling.

We had lunch while we waited for the bank to open at 15:00; this lunch siesta thing is really actually quite annoying but when it did open we exchanged our travellers cheques which we have been having some trouble in cashing and were pleasantly surprised that we didn't have to pay commission. In Las Ramblas, Western Union wanted to charge us 8.1%.

There seems to be only one town in Andorra and this is it.

Just behind where I took the above photograph was this sculpture which just made me think of the obvious Queen song!

The road from here on climbed and climbed into really snowy territory until we left via a long tunnel; I would say about 3km to add to the 5km tunnel we went through to get into Andorra. Quite amazingly tunnels.

One way down, the road ahead looked like this but once we hit the bottom of the valley the weather lifted and for a period it was really nice, we even saw the sun.

Unfortunately this didn't last and we drove through a monster storm just before Carcasonne where we were going to camp. We couldn't find the one campsite and the other was closed so we ended up at a small B&B which is proving to be a real win, it sure beats setting up camp in the rain. Just having a little luxury is hugely amplified due to the camping experience.

Although the auspices weren't great at the beginning of the day, Caron hasn't been grumpy at all today.