Carnival Horizon Review: Day 4 – Three Countries in One Day Tourfeatured

The light off of the Passeig de Gracía filtered into the master bedroom of our hotel room through the gauzy curtains. Loud whoops echoed up from the street below of bar patrons crawling home from their bunny bar hops.

It was 3:30 in the morning, and I couldn’t sleep.

As much as I tried to shortcut my way through the jet lag, it was there, and it wasn’t getting any better.

I watched the tail end of the Cubs game from my phone, deciding not to try to get back to sleep to only have to wake up an hour and a half later. It was still, after all, the late evening hours at home, and there was plenty of activity on my social media feeds to keep me entertained.

Remember when I thought our wake up call was early the day before? I had another thing coming. We had to be dressed, ready and in a taxi no later than 6:30 AM. We had a big day ahead of us.

See, on Sundays, most of Barcelona shuts down anyways, and with this particular Sunday also being Easter Sunday in a very religious country, we figured it would be best to take a tour. We usually do the Montserrat tour from Barcelona Day Tours (and if you’ve never done it, I can’t recommend it enough), but Stephanie really wasn’t digging on the idea of a third visit to Montserrat in three visits to Barcelona. I, on the other hand, could go up to Montserrat every single Sunday to stare out over the Catalonian countryside and never, ever tire of it.

So Stephanie found a tour on Viator that visited three countries in one day: small villages in Spain and France and then a visit to Andorra, one of Europe’s smallest countries. I was all for it. One, I could get my passport stamped in a new country and two, I could check it off my list because Andorra is largely known for skiing and I’ve been skiing exactly once in my life and there’s a reason I haven’t been back on the slopes since, so the likelihood of me opening up Google Flights and saying “Hey Google, book me a flight to Andorra” is in the slim to never category.

The tour met up at the Explore Catalunya’s office just outside of the Palau de la Música Catalana, our taxi dropping us off down an alley where a large group was already forming waiting for the office to open. Once it did, we checked in and were told there would be two groups touring this day and we were assigned to Enrique’s group. Enrique was an older gentleman with a hearty laugh and a joke in his back pocket. We knew we’d be in goods hands for the day.

Carolina, our bus driver for the day, pulled around a small mini bus and we began our drive out to our first stop of the day, Bagá — a small town in the north central region of Spain. The population is just over 2,000 in Bagá, which is less than double my graduating class in high school. The drive from Barcelona is just over an hour and a half, past those grand mountains of Montserrat (which are even more beautiful with the sunrise, in case you were wondering).

The town square in Bagá was all but empty as we climbed off the bus and walked down, sometime around 8:45 in the morning. Luckily for us, two cafes and a patisserie were open, and on Enrique’s suggestion, we bought pastries at the patisserie and took them to one of the cafes to enjoy with a coffee. The perfect Spanish morning.

We had about a half hour of free time before we met back up with Enrique, who guided us on a tour around the town’s center, regaling us with the tale of Wilfred the Hairy, who may or may not have repopulated the region.

After our walk, we hopped back on the bus, where we had another hour and a half drive to Ax-Les-Thermes, a French commune just over the border from Spain with a thriving spa industry, thanks in large part to the thermal hot spring that runs through. The ride to Ax-Les-Thermes wound us through the mountainside and I must have slept for most of it. I don’t get motion sick, a blessing given how much we travel, but I do get sleepy from heavy motion, and the winding roads and elevating altitudes were a winning combination to knock me out. Stephanie tells me the ride was beautiful.

Once we arrived at Ax-Les-Thermes, Carolina parked the van by a church, which would act as our central meeting place after our hour of free time, and Enrique led us on a short walk to show us some of our options for our time. There was the casino, many shops and boutiques (all of them, surprisingly, were open!) and restaurants and cafes, but we ducked away from the group the moment we spotted a French pharmacie. If you haven’t read our previous Europe trip journals, we are ob-sessed with French skincare and pharmacies, and we didn’t think we’d have a chance to visit this year because we didn’t plan on a Paris trip like we’ve usually capped off our Europe adventures with. Needless to say, Stephanie was pretty jazzed. I, on the other hand, had a one track mind: baguette.

We popped into a few shops to look around and took a walk through a small garden with some blooming cherry blossoms before heading back to the bus ahead of our meeting time. The rest of the group quickly reconvened with us and we headed off to our final stop – Andorra.

As Enrique told us, Andorra is a small country (the sixth smallest in Europe), located up in the Pyrenees mountains, nestled quietly between France and Spain. It’s known for two things: the skiing and the shopping. Andorra does not have a sales tax, which means prices are lower than they are for most of their European counterparts. As we drove in, cars were lined up at the gas station because people would drive in from France and Spain to get the cheaper gas. The grocery store (where, of course we ended up later in the afternoon, because I ran out of the soup mix I bought in Paris last May and I can’t, for the life of me, find it anywhere online that ships to the United Sates) was super crowded, too. But it’s not just basics – luxury shops line the main street in Andorra La Vella, the capital city.

Enrique came through and collected the passports for anyone who wanted them stamped – he’d run them into the customs office if they were open and sure to his word, when he came back to the bus, there was a brand new stamp in my passport.

I couldn’t keep my eyes open for the drive up to Andorra. It was probably one of the windiest drives I’ve ever been on. I don’t even remember falling asleep, but at some point, I woke up, we were on the top of a mountain and my ears were plugged up from the altitude. Carolina pulled over so we could take a photo stop with the beautiful mountain backdrop and, looking back at it now, climbing on top of a pile of snow on the top of a mountain when I was disoriented from sleep and altitude to take a picture? Probably not the smartest idea, but totally on brand for me. Thankfully, Mom stayed on the bus and didn’t witness the latest display of dumb things I do for the Instas.

From there, we made another quick photo stop near one of the ski resorts (where, by the way, we could see dog sleds as we drove down the mountain). I stayed on the bus because at this point, I literally could not stay awake and I was feeling crazy disoriented from the clogged ears.

Thankfully, when we arrived down at Andorra La Vella, it was flat, level and far enough below altitude that I could stand upright. Enrique showed us our meeting point in the parking lot for a mega grocery store and set us free for another hour of free time. Our first stop? The fragrance stores and pharmacies. The prices weren’t as low as we found them in Paris, but the VAT exemption helped offset that.

Andorra La Velle had plenty of cafés for us to choose from when we needed an afternoon pick-me-up. We ended up at Starbucks for coconut water and cappuccino freddos. The hydrating coconut water and the caffeine jolt from the foamy cappuccino were exactly what I needed to pep up enough to finish my shopping at that giant grocery store, where I bought enough mushroom soup mix to last me at least a month or two.

We hopped back on the bus with the rest of our group and Enrique explained to us that as we crossed back into Spain, we’d have to go through border patrol, which meant seatbelts on for everyone and that an agent may ask questions about how much money we have and what we were carrying back. Sure enough, the agent asked the man seated in front of Mom to exit the bus with him, where he asked him questions regarding how much cash he was carrying on him.

We cleared the check quicker than Enrique thought we would, as traffic is generally bad on Sunday’s as is and he was worried we’d face more traffic with people coming back from the holiday. Thankfully, everyone seemed to be out enjoying the beautiful day, which meant we faced none of the traffic he’d feared on our two or so hour drive back to Barcelona.

Enrique and Carolina put on some music for everyone to relax to and Stephanie marveled at the shifting landscapes outside her window and I…passed out again. I couldn’t tell if it was the jet lag, the change in weather or my allergies – in all likelihood a combination of the three – but I slept for hours on that bus across this tour. This time when I woke up, we were pulling into a restaurant, where Enrique had offered us our choice in cava, wine, sparkling water, still water or Cokes. I opted for none of the above because my face felt like a balloon that was about to burst, but in spirit, I was lifting a glass of cava and toasting to the feat of exploring three countries in one day.

The bus ride back took another two hours, with traffic coming in mostly as we approached Barcelona. I, unsurprisingly, slept for nearly the entire thing and before I knew it, we were pulling into Placa Catalunya and saying goodbye to our group, Enrique and Carolina.

Mom and Stephanie were contemplating dinner, but I could barely stand up, so they grabbed some food to go and we hopped into a taxi. When we got back to the hotel, they set out to fill out our paperwork for the ship and set up our luggage tags and I took a really long bubble bath, hoping the warm water would open my ears back up.

The rest of the night was spent packing and getting ready. I couldn’t believe our time in Barcelona was coming to an end. It flew by faster even though it went on for longer than our previous pre-cruise stays here had, but even beyond that, I couldn’t believe that the day had come and we’d finally be meeting the Horizon in the morning.