Sunday, March 29, 2015

Andorran time traveler

I always have trouble locating Andorra; for some reason my brain keeps telling me that Andorra is in the Andes, whereas it is actually several thousand miles away in the Pyrenees.  Andora is a lovely place marred only by the fact that it has basically one road and, in the summer, ten million tourists - which makes for a permanent traffic jam through the capital, Andorra la Vella.

Anyway, I found this slide of Sant Joan De Caselles in Canillo. When I visited in the mid 1970s it was a rather unkempt building stuck on a hillside and calling out for a little TLC. None the less, it was a beautifully rugged example of Romanesque architecture and well worth a picture.

Fast forward forty years and have a look at this link: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/73596078. The same church now stands in its own pristine grounds alongside a modern highway with its own car-park and what looks like hotel accommodation. Absolutely wonderful - even if the stone wall in the foreground has gone and it's not as beautifully rugged as I recall.

By the way, my fading brain cells had forgotten where I had taken the picture. But, by throwing the picture into Google image search, it was easy to verify the building and its location. Google; the poor man's Tardis.

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