I was thrilled to bag Andorra, my 62nd country. The Andorra stamp in my passport is one I’d been after for years. And there it was, plain as day, right on its own page in my passport.

Andorra is a mountain valley with 70,000 inhabitants, all of whom speak Spanish that’s spelled with a lot of Xs and Qs. Andorra is the only all-native Catalan-speaking country in the world. It’s a beautiful, refreshingly sophisticated country with architecture that reminds you of Switzerland, not Southern France. It seems a million miles from Toulouse. And it has over 3,000 stores.

Andorra is the duty-free capital of Europe – people flock here to shop from all over the continent. There are always lines at customs going in and out of the country. I pictured people buying cigarettes and alcohol, but I was wrong. They were buying every brand you’ve ever heard of.

It’s now 7pm. The stores are closing in 30 minutes. I need a pair of boxer shorts and a new t-shirt for tomorrow. I manage to get them just in time (Italians, by the way, don’t wear boxers, and few French men do; I don’t know about Spaniards). I head back to the hotel for a nice shower.

Then I go for dinner. It’s the usual cheeseless pizza, but this one was memorable. I’ve never had a thinner-crusted pizza. This pizza’s crust was about as thin as a piece of shirt cardboard and extremely tough. I had to use a steak knife and bear down on it to break the crust into small enough pieces to eat. Easily the worst pizza I’ve ever eaten, and I was starving. And I was upset, because I’d just dropped my camera.

I had been tired after a long day. I was wearing my clean underwear and my new t-shirt, and I was hungry and looking at restaurant after restaurant trying to find a place to eat. It got a bit chilly so I went to put on my sweater. My right hand thought it was giving my camera to my left hand, and my left hand though my right hand had it. I dropped the camera onto the hard sidewalk and glass shattered all over. I pick up the camera and notice that the lens was pretty much okay. I’d shattered the UV filter I had on the front to protect it.

So there I am eating rock-hard pizza, exhausted, looking at my camera trying to figure out how I’m going to get what’s left of the UV filter off my lens without scratching it. Hell of a day. I paid, went back to the hotel, and decided to solve the problem the next morning.

I got up and managed to pull the glass fragments from my filter without damaging the lens. Even though the metal was bent, the lens itself was in great shape, so I was able to continue shooting for the rest of my trip. Which was a good thing, because I got some excellent shots in Paris. I spent the rest of the day shopping.

I know the rock-bottom prices of a number of products, and I can tell you there were only a few bargains in Andorra. But they were good bargains. I got a strap for my new watch for a price I couldn’t even get on ebay. I saw some sporting goods at excellent prices. And mostly I saw a lot of so-so consumer stuff at not very good prices. Finally, I got the bus back to the train, went to Toulouse, and got a room at the cheesy hotel at the train station.

I enjoyed my day in Toulouse. It’s a charming town with a lively cultural life. Good restaurants, interesting people, sophisticated stores, and a feel of calm. I would say Toulouse is the Amsterdam of France – it has that relaxed meandering feel to it. I managed to get lost in my Toulousian peregrinations, and I ended up at the Grond Rond – a large round park that also serves as a roundabout. If you pronounce “Grond Rond” properly in French, it should sound as though you are trying, unsuccessfully, to start an old truck.

- by David Siegel