As blogged yesterday the trip today was a long one from Barcelona through Andorra and on to Toulouse.
We left Barcelona at 8.40am and arrived in Toulouse at 4.45pm with stops totaling about 90 minutes.
The first record was the amount of tolls we paid today - over 35 euro (or $NZ70) for a trip of around 400 kms so that is 1 euro for every 11.50km. The higher toll cost was due to using 2 tunnels through the mountains one of over 5kms and the other just over 2km.
We stopped at Andorra la Villa for lunch and was pleasantly surprised by its beauty and obvious wealth.
After lunch as we continued on climbing through the Pyrenees, if at all possibility it became more & more attractive with stone/shale buildings sitting on the slopes and with chair lifts rising higher up the steep slopes in the areas where ski fields would exist in the winter - and that would be a sight to behold as well.
We haven't been to Switzerland but imagine that Andorra would be very similar to the ski villages in that country.
The old saying that what goes up must come down is so true and we spent around an hour coming out of the mountains down on to the valley floor - it seemed to be an never ending drive down a hill.
Having returned into the French countryside the drive into Toulouse was relatively ho hum apart from the fact that we broke our second record on the trip - the external temperature as measured on the Peugeot's instrument panel was at one stage 41 (I took a photo of it when it was 38) and I can tell you that it was very hot when we stopped for a drink around 4pm.
The third record was that Andorra has the lowest diesel price of anywhere that we have seen.
We have paid various from 1.28 euro to 1.55 and Andorra had it available at 1.09
Not much time to check out Toulouse after we arrived so will make a more informed opinion after tomorrow but at this stage I would have to say that those rugby players who leave NZ for Toulouse would need to be paid a large sum to make it attractive!Oh, and the stupidity - we went to the trouble to unpack and have on the back seat of the car jerseys just in case it was cold when we were high in the mountains: at 31 degrees they weren't required!!
(most photos taken from moving vehicle today)
