On The Road To Andorra

El dissabte vam anar a Andorra. Com sempre fem, vam imprimir la ruta proposada per Viamichelin. I com sempre fem, ens vam acabar equivocant en algun punt del recorregut. Total, que hora i mitja conduint per acabar a Manresa prenent un cafè. Però, al final, cap allà a les 14h vam arribar. Vam veure tant de trànsit i tal, que només creuar la frontera, vam veure un centre comercial i allà ens vam quedar.
La veritat és que el Punt de Trobada (el nom del centre comercial) és bastant com les botigues d’un aeroport, però amb la gent més barriobajera. Et venen el tabac amb tot de regals i la distribució és molt semblant a la que et pots trobar a la botiga aquella tant gran que hi ha a l’aeroport d’El Prat. No ens va agradar gens. Però això no va impedir comprar tabac a meitat de preu per carregar el magatzem. L’alcohol estava bé de preu. Però el problema era que, abans d’anar a Andorra, no vam passar per cap super local per comprar-los, per tant no vam comprar-ne. Només hi havia, com a gran ganga, una ampolla de whiskey de 7 o 8 litres. Aparentment escocès. Segurament produït il.legalment en alguna masia d’El Bages. 6€ que valia, massa sospitós per ser veritat. Allò segurament no era res més que un derivat de matarrates.
Ens va sorprendre, per això, que la gent encara comprava sucre en grans quantitats…2 o 3 caixes de 12 paquets per persona. Potser el sucre no té límit d’entrada. A nosaltres, ens va parar primer una treballadora del Ministeri de Turisme per fer-nos una enquesta. I ens va dir que, entre tots els enquestats, sortejaven un cap de setmana a Caldea amb totes les despeses pagades. També ens va parar la Guardia Civil per veure quina quantitat d’alcohol i tabac portavem. Tot dins dels límits (tampoc va mirar gaire), per tant, ens van deixar tornar a entrar a Espanya.
En total, un dissabte de conduir molt. 420 km vam fer. I el Sucio ja té més de 228000km a les seves rodes.

We went to Andorra on Saturday. As we always do, we printed out the suggested route from Viamichelin. And, as we always do, we took the wrong turning at some point. All in all, this meant driving for about one hour and a half just to end up in Manresa having a coffe. But we got there by 2pm. We saw such traffic that we saw a shopping centre after the border and we decided to stay there.
The truth is Punt de Trobada (meeting point –that’s how the mall was called) is like the airport shops, although the people look more dodgy. They sell you cigarrettes with all sorts of presents, and the layout is really similar to that big shop you can find at El Prat. We didn’t like it at all. However, this didn’t prevent us from buying cigarrettes to stock up our warehouse. The price of alcohol wasn’t really bad. But the main problem was that we didn’t check prices at home before going to Andorra, so we didn’t have a reference. So we didn’t buy any. As a big bargain, we only found a 7 or 8 litre whiskey bottle. Scotch apparently. But probably illegally manufactured in a cottage in El Bages. That was €6, too suspicious to be true. Probably that was only some kind of rat poison.
We were surprised though because people still bought large amounts of sugar. 2 or 3 12 pack-boxes per person. Maybe there’s no limit with sugar. We were stopped by some employee of the Tourist Office first, for a survey. She told us that we entered a draw among all the people surveyed of a whole weekend all inclusive in Caldea. The Guardia Civil also stopped us to check the cigarrettes and alcohol we were bringing into Spain. Everything was within the limits (he didn’t make any effort to check either), so we could get into Spain again.
All in all then, we drove 420Km on Saturday. Sucio is now more than 228000km old on his wheels.