Llorts, Andorra, Europe
La Neu Aparthotel

We woke up this morning after a GREAT night’s sleep at the AC Hotel and packed up our stuff to head out.  We stopped at a bakery on Plaça de Catalunya called Elias Boulanger and Melissa picked out a few things for us to have for breakfast on the way out of Girona.

Our first stop was a town called La Seu d’Urgell, which was recommended by the car rental girl yesterday.  We were not impressed.  It was really hot there, and there was a big Saturday market going on, but most of it was like a car boot sale, so it was just people selling their crap on the streets.  It might have been a nice town to walk around if not for all the market stalls.  We bought a couple of massive nectarines and ate them as we walked back to the car.

We drove on to Andorra where we didn’t even have to stop at the border crossing, we just drove straight through as if we belonged there.  We got to the capital of Andorra la Vella and parked our little Fiat 500 so we could go for a walk around the town.  It was a typical ski town, that looks a bit strange because we are here in the height of summer.  We went into the historic center and grabbed a bite to eat at Restaurant Vilarrasa.  We had another plat du jour for €9.50 which wasn’t as good as yesterday’s, but still not bad.  I had the cannelloni to start, the Catalan sausage called butifarra, and some ice cream.  Melissa had Iberian ham with melon to start, pork loin, and flan.  We finished our meals and headed out of the town to get to the starting point for our hike.

We had to start driving up one of the hills just outside of Andorra La Vella and found the starting point for the path leading up toward Refugi de Perafita.  We were aiming for a lake at the top of a mountain that our Maps.Me app said was about 1.5 hours to get to by foot.  Before we started walking we met an older French couple and they said it was 2.5 hours just to get to the refuge, then it would be another half hour to get to the lake.  We were hoping that they were wrong, so we started our walk at 4pm.  It was a beautiful hike up through the forest, and a fairly steep walk too.  We got about an hour into the walk and had a look at the map to see that we were just under half way to the refuge.   We decided that we wouldn’t have enough time to get up to the lake, enjoy our time there and get back down in time to check in to our hotel at 8pm, so we went up a bit further to a slightly more scenic point and put the drone up for a short flight before heading down.

We were hoping to see the lake that we were hiking to with the drone, but it didn’t work out.  I sent it up 120m above where we were, and still wasn’t even close to the top of the mountain, so we definitely would have had a long hike ahead of us to get to the top.  We headed back down the mountain on another trail so we could get a different view than on the way up, and it ended up being a really nice hike.  I know that Melissa really wanted to get to the lake, but we should have started our hike a few hours earlier to actually make it up there.

We saw on the map that there was another lake at the top of the road from where our hike had started, so we drove up there and took the short walk down to Llac d’Engolasters.  It would have been really pretty up there if not for the massive telephone towers at the end of the lake.  There were a bunch of people there with their kids and dogs enjoying the beautiful day, and we sat on the side of the lake and enjoyed the serenity for a little while.  We started driving down the mountain at about 7:15pm and headed toward Llorts, a small village north of Andorra La Vella where our hotel was located.  We had pinned the location on a map before we headed up there, and when we arrived, the map had the wrong location of the La Neu Aparthotel.  We walked around the village for 10 minutes looking very confused until Melissa was able to find someone in a building that knew what we were looking for and they told us to continue on about 200m down the road, and boom, there it was!

We got there at 7:51pm, so I’m glad we left ourselves enough time to get there.  I’ve been in the position before when you arrive at a hotel to find that reception is closed and you have to try and phone someone out of hours, it’s not a fun situation.  The aparthotel is really nice, in a perfect location in the middle of the mountains, and perfectly quiet.  This hotel is not in the middle of a village, it’s just on its own on the side of the road, so we could sit out on our balcony and not see or hear anyone, it was great.  Another nice surprise was that when we got into the room there were two champagne glasses out on the table with some fresh baked cookies and a note saying there was a bottle of cava in the fridge for us to have as a celebration of Melissa’s birthday.  That was a very nice touch!

We were both exhausted after the long day and didn’t really feel like going out to a restaurant to sit for a full meal, so we drove to the closest village (Ordino), ordered a pizza and a rice meal, and took it back to the apartment.  We sat out on the balcony and ate our food, which didn’t end up being very good, and drank our cava, and had a great night.  We got the food from a restaurant that was recommended from the owner of our hotel called Tropic, and it was disappointing.  The pizza was mediocre, and the rice meal that Melissa ordered didn’t come with rice, it came with really greasy fries, so that was disappointing.  Ah well, it was still a lovely day, and the bottle of cava went down very well.  Thanks La Neu Aparthotel, it was a great night following a great day 🙂