Borderline Insanity

Logan McDaneld
May 11
3 min read

Having spent our time in a place that isn't its own country (but thinks it is) it was time to move onto a place that is its own country, and thinks it's the only one that matters: France. We made our way to Sete on the French Mediterranean. The main draw was a lovely visit by my (Logan's) family. The boys were overjoyed to see grandparents, their cousin, and aunt and uncle. It was a lovely time, spent both visiting and playing Carcassonne as well as visiting wineries when not engaged in more important activities such as driving go karts.

The traditional chocolate Easter chicken

Carol trying not to look at the delicious oysters and snails

Learning how to shoot a crossbow at Carcassonne

Before long we were on the road (and on our own again). Randomly, we came across a castle and decided to check it out, because how often do you pass a random castle? In our case, fairly often, as we are in France. As we drove along we passed Llivia, Spain. We thought it an odd thing to pass a Spanish town, as we were at that moment driving through France. Turns out, it's a tinky enclave of Spain completely surrounded by France as a result of some contractual trickery in the 1600s (word to the wise - if you ever find yourself annexing part of another country double check what counts as a village and what is a town). All this as we were on our way to Andorra. Where's Andorra you ask? The answer is, nobody knows. The place is so small that even Andorrans have a hard time finding it. So small that you nearly need a passport to lie down at night. At about half the population and 5% of the area of Mesa County it's hard to find, but not to be missed. A high alpine haven along the spine of the Andes, it's basically like if you took a giant ski resort and turned it into a tiny country. Don't tell Vail, or they will start getting ideas. We had only two days but it was very much worth it.

Tim wondering why he has a headache at the water powered forge

Onwards we went, across the Pyrenees and into Spain, eventually arriving at a lovely town called Ainsa. Once a key city in the Aragon kingdom (with a castle to prove it) it is now a lovely historic town surrounded by postcard-looking villages, rolling hills, soaring peaks, and all kinds of adventure. We had no trouble filling our final days in Spain before heading to Madrid to head back to the US. While Spain was definitely a ton of fun, we had been out of the country for 276 days and counting, and it was time to head back to familiar pastures.