Breakfast is a strange business in Spain, most unAmerican. They eat their eggs at dinner and lunch, usually fried sunny side up and dropped on something else. At breakfast, the Spanish pretty much drink coffee and eat something sweet. Some people seem to eat ham and cheese sandwiches on crusty bread with coffee. None of this appeals to me. So, we rent Airbnb’s and make our own breakfasts. But today we will eat in a hotel dinning room and we will be offered lunch meat and sweet rolls and toast with raw tomatoes crushed and spread across it. Fortunately, they will also have a Spanish omelette, and some pastries, which I can make do with. Sacrifice though it is.

We then make a long walk through the city to the Aljaferia, the Moorish fortress later usurped by Queen Isabella, the Catholic. The place was doctored up by Isabella to hide much of the Islamic satanic decoration, and then later left to deteriorate as a military warehouse. In the 1800s folks started thinking this wasn’t so good, and a movement was started to recover Spain history, Muslim or not. Thus the Aljaferia exists today, much inferior the Alhambra in Granada, but still remarkable. It is free Sunday, so we are in a big crowd as we go through. But it is worth the effort to see the art and architecture of a culture so advanced so many centuries ago. 

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We have a long walk back to the car and stop for lunch at a restaurant off a plaza that we discover only by chance. We have fine salad with pulpa (octopus) and then some tapas, grilled shrimp and fish and a pasta with rabo de torro rolled inside.  We do not have time to see the Zaragoza Basilica inside. There is also a Goya museum to visit. I would come back to Zaragoza and spend several more days; it is a very nice city. It is big enough to be urbane and small enough to be civilized. It is the biggest surprise of our trip.

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We must drive three more hours toward Barcelona and then north to arrive in Andorra. The country side is flat and dry, there are small cities along the way, but we are mostly on the expressway and see them only from a distance. As we approach the Pyrenees, the countryside is mostly farming on some rolling hills. Not impressive and probably pretty poor. Mountain begin to appear and then a customs station. As we expect, the Andorrans have little interest in our arrival, though customs agents pose like they care, but seemingly stop no one to ask questions. 

Once in Andorra, things become bazar. We are surrounded by high mountains and driving a highway very well made. On both sides are commercial buildings and retail stores. They are packed in the steep valley on both sides of the road. It is clear you can buy anything here and they want you to do it. I think this will be for a short time, but it goes on mile after mile. We are headed for Escaldes-Engordany, which in my mind is a sleepy ski village without much action, like most ski villages are before the snow flies. 

The traffic speeds along this unending commercial stretch. There are traffic circles continuously and we try to follow the GPS that is giving bad information about which exit to take from the circle. When we get to EE, it has become dark and the traffic crazy fast and the drivers are a nasty bunch of impatient locals. It is not the time to be relying on a machine to know where to go. Near the end of our approach to our condo, we miss a complicated exit on a circle and end up in a mile long tunnel going the wrong way. The GPS reverses us and we go back a different way. We are completely lost in a sea of one-way roads on steep hills, when it says turn right and arrive. We do and are behind a huge high rise apartment complex in the middle of a small city. This is not the sleepy ski town I was expecting. It is more like coming from the desert to Las Vegas.

It is more than complicated to figure out how to get from the no parking alley behind the condo to the front door. It requires hauling our bags and food a great distance and then up two different elevators  a total of 6 stories to the condo. Then we must find a remote parking space that has been ill defined by the owner, who was supposed provide parking at the building. The process takes two hours. Once in the condo we go out on the high rise terrace. Instead of a sleep ski town, we see a city like Madrid. It is like God took 40 square block off Madrid and placed it improbably into steep mountain valley. We have a spectacular view of this urban mess, including a glass pyramid twenty stories high with a laser light show shooting up and down its sides. Above all this, rise the shadows of beautiful mountains barely visible in the dark. It might be the way I would design hell if I got the contract. 

This place is perplexing. There is an untold story about Andorra; I would love to read about the forces behind its development. Wikipedia says it is half tax shelter and half ski resort. I thought I would find cows and sheep and a few tired chair lifts. I simply do not know what to make of it. 

We have had a long day. This condo has some serious flaws. Parking the car was a nightmare. But we found a pizza near the parking lot that produced a late dinner of some quality. So all is well. We’ll try to sort this out tomorrow.