I didn't want to go to Andorra.
I wanted to go to Cyprus.
There was a project meeting planned in Cyprus in November 2024.
Then the date of the meeting shifted. And the meeting facility in Cyprus was not available at the new date.
And the meeting was moved to Barcelona. (Well, technically, to Badalona, but that's next to Barcelona.)
I had been looking forward to the Cyprus meeting, as I've never been to Cyprus. It would have been a new country to visit.
Then I remembered that Andorra isn't that far away (about 200 km). Instead going to Cyprus, a country I never visited before, I could visit Andorra, a country I never visited before.
Arguably, not the strongest reason for renting a car and spending most of my spare time driving (twice 200 km doesn't seem much, but a fair amount of that is on slow and winding mountain roads). But then again, the trip also included a ridiculous amount of effort for one single picture (but that's a different story, being told here). So it's kind of par for the course.
On the way to Andorra, I went to the Teatre-Museu Dalí, which was vaguely along the route (well, it was a 150km detour, but close enough...)
Despite the first part of the name, it's not a theatre, at least there are no theatre performances there. The building used to be a theatre, but that been destroyed and the museum has been built on its ruins.
It's an interesting place to visit.
The place is not only a museum, with many works of Dalí lining the walls, but the place itself has was designed by Dalí, so there are many obscure aspects of the building itself, which he designed.
The courtyard is an open area, where the audience used to sit when this was still a theatre (and probably the area had a roof at that time),
Next to it (obviously) is the former theatre stage, which now has a large glass dome on top.
Probably the best known room of the building it the "Mae West" room.
From the ground level, it is designed to look like a regular, though mostly empty, room with some odd furniture in it, like some lip-shaped sofa and a suspiciously nasal looking something (possibly an abstract fireplace).
Put from a specific position, the place looks like a face. (Given the name of the artwork, it's supposed to resemble Mae West, but it might be any Hollywood "platinum bombshell" from the 1930s, like Jean Harlow.)
Slightly "hidden" behind the Mae West room is a small bedroom, although it is not quite clear whether this has ever been an accessible place or whether it has been designed to be walled in. At the moment, there are only two peepholes in a wall that allow a view of the room. On the other hand, someone needs to be able to change defective light bulbs, so I assume there's a hidden door to it somewhere.
The other large 'designed environment' (besides the courtyard, the stage and the Mae West room) is the former foyer of the theatre, which has a large painted ceiling and a selection of strange objects. (Although, technically, according to the museum's web page, it isn't a painted ceiling. Dalí painted five canvases, which were then attached to the ceiling.)
And while it is not the original (which is at the MoMA in New York), there is a version of Dalí's best known work, "The Persistence of Memory" in the form of a tapestry.
Beside the specially designed rooms, the Teatre-Museu also works as a regular museum, with objects and paintings displayed along the walls.
The Teatre-Museu Dalí not only has many original works of Dalí, but they also got the original Dalí, as he is buried in the Teatre-Museu.
The most surprising thing for me was the variety of areas Dalí had worked in.
I essentially knew that "this is the painter with the melting clocks and deformed things (like elephants with spidery legs).
But I didn't know that he also experimented with stereographic drawings.
Or holography.
Or lenticular lenses.
As the museum is not exclusively dedicated to Dalí's art, it is sometimes confusing what has been done by Dalí, what are collaborations and what are works by others that Dalí liked. Sure, it's noted in the small print (usually a label on the wall), but it's not always obvious.
There is a whole gallery of art representing people and humanoid shades made up from rocks and lichen. These works were done by Antoni Pitxot, a friend of Dalí, who also co-designed the Teatre-Museu Dalí.
Surprisingly, Pitxot did draw his pictures as still life drawings. He didn't sketch the shape of a female model and then filled it in with rock and stone shapes. He built the stone figures and then made a painting. I had assumed that the figure on the right in the last photo was the attempt to represent the painting as a real life object. But it was the physical model for the painting,
The ornate glass window was done by Jacques Grüber.
So, not everything in the Teatre-Museu Dalí is by Dalí himself.
That doesn't make the place less interesting. And it's worth a 150 km detour.
A detour on the way to Andorra, where I was heading next.
Getting there took a while.
It isn't far.
Driving distance from Figueres (where the museum is) to Andorra la Vella (the capital of Andorra) is less than 200 km.
Any description of Andorra will soon mention that it's a mountain country (located in the Pyrenees). And that means that flat areas for straight roads in or around Andorra are somewhat scarce.
Or, to put it differently, if the GPS trail of the road towards Andorra looks like this, you know it's not going to be a fast drive:
At least the road was a bit straighter than some I drove on in Andorra on the next day:
(But I drove them for fun.)
In any case, the point of this is that it was already dark when I arrived in Andorra la Vella. So the only pictures I have from the capital are from a bridge across the Gran Valira and some illuminated water jets.
At least the lights on the bridge give a clear indication where the picture was taken.
Coincidentally, I was standing next to a sculpture made by Dalí, named "The Nobility of Time", when I took the picture.
Which would have given a nice thematic link between seeing Dalí's art at the Teatre-Museu Dalí in Figueres and the bridge in Andorra Vella.
But the sculpture is only sparsely lit at night, so I didn't get a good picture of it.
Next morning it was time to head for the mountains. (Giving the geography of Andorra, there isn't any other option anyway.)
I drove up to Lake Engolasters, which is only about two kilometers from the capital as the crow flies, but about three times the distance as the car drives. (It's one of the tracks shown above.)
The place it beautiful in November, as there are few people around on a Monday morning. In the summer it's probably packed with people.
And you need to pick your photo spots with some care, as there are two large radio towers, spoiling the view somewhat. There's also a dam for the hydroelectric power station, which looks a bit like someone has built a wall right across the lake. (Mostly since the dam is a straight line and not curved like on most other water reservoirs.)
But it's a nice area to have a walk. Especially on an unexpectedly warm and sunny November day at an altitude of 1600 meters.
As I had to head back to Barcelona, I didn't have time for any other activities, But I tried to drive to the border on a scenic route.
There's a fun looking route that goes from Andorra la Vella, which is at about 1000 meters altitude over a mountain pass at about 2000 meters altitude back down to the border at about 1000 meters.
It's by no means the shortest distance to the border. The direct road is less than 5 km from Aixovall, the scenic mountain route is more like 25 km. But doubtlessly scenic.
I didn't get to drive the whole road, though.
Part of the road is closed in the winter. And the road closure starts on the 15th of November. (And I was there on the 18th of November.) So, I did only get to drive the first eight kilometers before I had to turn around and drive back to the main road.
But there were still many great sightseeing spots along the way.
From some of them you can almost see the whole country (or at least the parts that stick out most).
The picture has been taken from a place that is about 800 meters from the southwest border of Andorra (to Spain). A little above the centre of the picture a few buildings can be vaguely discerned. That's (more or less) where Andorra la Vella is. The mountains direct behind that are where Lake Engolasters is located. And the mountains to the left of that are (probably) the ones around Pic del la Cabaneta, which is less than 2 km from the French border to the north.
All in all, Andorra feels like a strange country.
While it historically didn't happen that way at all (even in ancient times, or maybe especially then, people were keenly aware that there were settlements along the way through the Pyrenees), but the place seems a bit like an oversight.
It gives the impression that Spain and France decided at some point on the Pyrenees mountains as the border between both countries. And, realistically, only the area up to the mountains was politically relevant. So both countries only thought of the area up to the mountains and then, sort of, assumed that technically the border would be somewhere in the middle of the mountain range, where nobody important would go anyway.
And then they discovered a small country located somewhere in there.
Again, that isn't at all how history went.
However, Andorra seems like that. Like a small, unexpected country hidden in the mountains. A bit 'lost world' (sans dinosaurs, unfortunately), a bit Shangri-La.
In any case, I had to get back to Barcelona, so it was time to leave Andorra.