Sort, Spain |
 |
Sort, Spain |
|
| We had no intention of stopping for the night in Sort. It was not even 20% of the way to where we planned to return our rental car. However, it was a long drive from Andorra to Sort since the N260 road winds its way up and down mountains. |
 |
The drive was beautiful. We were a bit worried when it started to rain and then snow, but there were hardly any other cars on the road, so Seth could go as slow as he wanted. We stopped often to see the view and even once for a one hour siesta. |
 |
| At one point, we were above the clouds, but headed straight into them. |
 |
| Finally, after passing numerous cows, houses, mountain goats
and a few "don't blink - or you'll miss them" collection of houses, we
saw a rather sizeable town down in the valley. We figured it was finally
Sort (and we were right).
|
 |
 |
The Sort town was having a special event and the main
town road was closed off for vendors selling things.
It was nearly 5pm and soon to be dark. We didn't want to drive in the dark, so we stopped at the first hotel in Sort to get a room for the night. It was closed until December 5th. We then stopped at the second hotel in Sort - it had a sign on the door with a telephone number. We were not brave enough to call. We then parked the car and wandered down the main street, looking for another hotel. We were very excited to find an Internet cafe where we wrote a Locomotions about how we were "Sort of at a loss in Sort". |
| We did see at the tourist office a map that noted a third hotel in town. We'd actually drove by this hotel on our way into town, but didn't remember seeing it. Since we had already struck out twice on hotels, we figured we'd be driving some more and purchased two casette tapes for drive from a vendor. | |
| The hotel we ended up staying at didn't look like a hotel
at all. It looked more like a restaurant. It was Seth in the end who noticed
the big neon sign on the roof with a person sleeping. Problem was, this
big neon sign was not illuminated.
We were so desperate for a place to slep that we didn't ask to see the room first as we usually do. Things did not bode well since it was the cheapest room we'd stayed in yet and since the downstairs area of the "restaurant" had a man lying on a couch, a few kids playing on the floor and maybe two other people sitting around playing cards. We didn't care, we prefered to sleep in any room than the car. To our great surprise, the room was very modern and nicely decorated. For the equivalent of 35 USD, we usually get an older bathroom and a bit of an outdated room. We were lucky in Nice to get a brand new budget hotel, but this was even better. The furnishings and bathroom didn't have a cheap feel to them. It was a very nice place! |
 |
 |
We were also a bit hesitant to enter the establishment
where we ended up eating dinner. It was filled with about 10 men all sitting
around drinking. One man was even standing in the way of doorway, so Tara
(being brave since she could read "hamburger" on the menu) poked in her
head and said with a questioning tone "comida?" ie. "food?". Her question
caused a great amount of amusement and for the first few minutes after
we entered the snack bar, we could hear the patrons in front saying "comida"
and laughing. We didn't care, they had food!
They also had beer. Plus two kids playing darts. We'd observed in Andorra and now here that the thing to do in the evening seemed to be to visit with your family and friends while working in the local snack bar. Hardly ever was anyone else eating while we were, they were just hanging around, talking, drinking, playing cards, etc. etc. The waitress at both snack bar's we ate at were there with their young kids. Dinner was good and neither one of us lost an eye from the kids throwing darts just to the side of us. |
| The next morning we did some shopping in town. Tara found postcards
and Seth was able to act out dental floss sufficiently well so that we
could buy some.
It was with great regret that we drove out of town instead of staying a few more days. We only had two weeks to spend in Spain since four months of traveling through Europe had gone by so quickly. |
 |
| The ride out of Sort along N260 was just as picturesque as the ride in - but thankfully, tunnels had been bored through the mountains on the South side of town. Today we drove straight through mountains and made better time than the day before - when we had to go over mountains. The road narrowed suddenly since there was a house built really close to the road. This one house jutting into the road proved to be the start of (Gerry was part of the town's name), a very quaint little town with a big park along the famous xxxx river. We'd heard of the river from the lady in Sort's tourist information. | ||
 |
We stopped nearly immediately after leaving Sort in this little village built into the side of a hill along a river spanned by an old bridge. |  |
| Unfortunately, it was still too early for lunch (only 12:30).
We enjoyed following the river though the mountain valley. At one point, we were able to stop and see the river close up. Seth seeing big birds with huge wingspans when we stopped along the river. |
 |
| We were driving by a cafeteria along the road when Seth decided to
pull in. We were not sure if we should stop of not since there were no
other customers in sight, but a friendly doggie did come running out to
greet us as we drove up. Tara got out to check the menu and when we saw
that they served tropical pizza, she went in to check if they were open.
The one man working assured her that they were open. We actually couldn't
have left if we wanted to at that point, since the little doggie was standing
right in front of our left front tire. I warned Seth not to move the car
and we decided to eat here.
Seth made sure the litle doggie didn't get in the car's way by holding him while Tara parked the car. Doggie looked healthy and was very friendly, but we worried that he'd gotten to close to a car before since he was only walking on 3 legs. Lunch turned out to be yummy and memorable. In addition to the doggie,
we saw two kitties. The guy in the restaurant told us that there were actually
25 cats around! Just as we were paying with our credit card, the electricity
went out and we had to scrape together all the cash we had an paid 2110
of the 2300 bill. We saw two more cats as we were driving out.
|
 |
We enjoyed this area of Spain so much that we'd think about coming back and spending two weeks of so just along the xxxx river. Maybe in a national park.
| Category | Rating | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Overall Experience | - | |
| Ease of Journey | - | |
| Accommodation | - | |
| Activities | - | |
| Coolness | - |
Sort is a 5 hour drive from Andorra along N260 if you stop often to take in the view, drive slowly due to bad weather and take an hours nap along the route!
