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Andorra
Crossing from France into Andorra, I arrived in the town of Pas de la Casa. It fits the stereotype of Andorra, consisting of little more than low-tax shopping malls against a backdrop of snow-covered mountains. Here I bought a new camera and as many cans of Red Bull as I could carry, while my fellow arrivals from France were plundering the stocks of alcohol and tobacco.
Thirty kilometres down the road I came to the capital, Andorra la Vella. This little city seems like a bustling metropolis compared to much of Andorra, holding its finest restaurants and hotels. It was strangely warm here, as if winter had not yet set in.
Though Andorra la Vella is a popular destination, the surrounding mountain landscape limits its expansion. There is only a single main road through it, on which traffic jams are frequent. A bus ride of only a few kilometres could take an hour.
As befitting the capital of what has only recently gone from a minor mountain province to a centre of commerce and tourism, much of the architecture is modern.
The bridges tend to all be white constructions of rods and spheres.
Gibraltar
Crossing into Gibraltar from Spain is a short walk, but somewhat unnerving as it crosses the territory’s runway.
If one survives that, one comes to an impressive view of the Rock.
Gibraltar serves as something of an England in miniature, with its double-decker buses, red postboxes, fish and chips shops, Cadbury’s chocolate, and so forth.
Yet, it is a kind of time-capsule England from half a century ago. Gibraltar apparently never got the great influx of immigrants from the West Indies and the Indian Subcontinent that has greatly changed the culture of England itself.
Of course, one other major difference between the real England and this holding in southern Iberia is the weather. This December 24 was marked by warm temperatures and clear skies.