Parador Arties Spain

This parador, in northernmost Catalonia, was originally the home of Don Gaspar de Portola, the discoverer of California. Today it reminds one of a ski lodge, with fairly simple furnishings and rooms which, while perfectly adequate, tend not to be as large as the usual parador norm. The comedor offers good food, there are numerous restaurants in the town and i recall that when I was there they poured unusually generous measures in the bar. While I'd probably not chose to make the fairly long and arduous drive to Arties (from Spain, not from France, the Vielha tunnel goes directly to it from the north)for the sake of the Parador alone, there are some very good reasons for choosing to stay there. Foremost is the location: it's square in the middle of the Val d'Aran, a truly delightful Pyrenean valley with a vast network of hiking trails in the summer and skiing in the winter. It's a ways from the Back Bowls of Vail but quite acceptable for beginners and intermediates, and the cross country trails are challenging. There is an outdoor as well as an indoor pool. And then there are the little Romanesque churches of the Val. Half a dozen of them have their interior spaces entirely decorated with oversize Romanesque frescos in vivid, not to say barbaric, colors. To be sure nowadays these are reproductions, the originals were starting to feel the effects of time by the 1920's and were carefully peeled off and are on display in a specially built pavillion in Barcelona's Museo de Catalonia (an absolute must see). But the reproductions were so lovingly made, with such careful attention to the inherent character of the originals, that one gets a very good sense of what the interior of these churches must have looked and felt like in the 12th century. In the off season one can stay in the parador for roughly a hundred dollars a night.