Spain-Andorra-France

Today we drove to France by way of Andorra through rolling Spanish countryside dotted with little towns and ancient ruins, the foothills of the Pyrenees dry and rocky, into the mountains of Andorra festooned with duty-free shops and ski chalets, out on the French side with winding switchback roads clinging to the mountain side, and on to the parking-lot of the A9 highway jammed with quite possibly every citizen of France heading to a holiday retreat.  We needed to stop in Andorra for lunch as that is the criteria for ticking a country off the list in the little "country count competition" that Laurel and her sister have going on.... The drive to Andorra was pretty much on schedule at just shy of two hours.  The drive to Avignon on the other hand was almost 7 hours instead of the expected 4.5.  Peter Mayle writes about this phenomenon in at least one of his books on Provence but we never thought we would actually be part of this migration.  We provided a very excited Nikita with periodic updates of our progress and finally arrived in Avignon around 8pm.  Nikita, Sandrine, and Christophe were very happy we made it safe and sound and we enjoyed much chatter over a traditional Provençale meal of Pistou (vegetable soup with beans, basil pesto, and gruyere cheese), ham, melon, wine, cheese, bread, etc.  As it was getting late we regretfully passed on dessert and headed off to the grandmother's flat which will be our base for the week, very generously stocked with absolutely everything we might need.