Travelling dolls: Vielha e Mijaran

Hello dolly friends and welcome to a new post from the Travelling Dolls series, a series in which I talk a bit about the story of the places I've visited with the company of my dolls. Last year I wrote the first post in this series when we travelled to Albarracín and I loved having the chance to talk about a place in Spain that maybe isn't as well known to people from other countries. You also seemed to find it very interesting, so I thought it would be interesting to do it again.

When we thought about travelling this summer, first we considered going to Vienna, but international travelling is getting so expensive, so we decided to stay in Spain again. Pretty much like last year, our criteria were to find somewhere that is cooler than our hometown, isn't too crowded and that has yummy food. So, after a lot of debating, Mr. Monster suggested Vielha, in the province of Lérida, Cataluña.

Vielha, also spelled Viella, is located in northern Spain, very close to the borderline with France and is 974 meters over the sea level. It is located in the Vall d'Aran region (Aran Valley in English) where, besides Spanish, they do speak Aranés, which derives from Occitan that is also spoken in some areas of southern France. Some of the names of the places we visited are in Aranés, but I'm going to try my best to translate them to both Spanish and English. I don't speak Aranés, but I did not have any issues understanding what most of the things meant. 

Vielha

Because Vielha is so far from where we live (about 7 hours drive), on our way there we spent a night in Zaragoza, which we already visited a few years ago. We didn't get to visit much of it, as we really only spent there a few hours, but here's a pic of the Ebro river, which is the widest (as in copious) river in Spain.

The next day, after 3 hours drive, we get to Vielha. While Vielha is a town on itself, Vielha e Mijaran is actually a group of towns. I'm not quite sure about the exact translation for this, but it constituted in 1970 when 6 other towns joined the town of Viella. Vielha means "old" in Aranés, very similar to the Spanish word "vieja", and even closer to the Catalan word "vella". Mijaran  means "medio Arán" or "middle of Arán" in English. 

The townhall

Despite having a population of roughly 5.000 people, the town was quite busy and it was more touristy than I expected. It's quite close to popular ski destination Baqueira Beret, so some visitors during ski season were expected, but I didn't expect it to be so popular, specially during summer season. But, apparently it's not just popular in winter, since there are a lot of hiking routes and nice nature spots you can do either walking or with a bike.

One of the most popular routes is the Uelhs deth Jouèu and Artiga de Lin route. To get there, we had to drive to the town of Ès Bordes, and from there follow a tiny mountain road until the parking spot. From there, you can walk up to the start of the actual route, or wait for a train that will take you there. We decided to take the train on our way up, so we wouldn't start the route already tired, but lots of people decided to walk up. We first stopped to visit the Saut de Pòmero (cascada de Pomero/ Pomero waterfall), which was like 5-10 minute walk. It was a nice spot, and I was planning to take doll photos there, but it was crowded and we couldn't even sit down for a bit to rest and enjoy the view.

Continuing with the route, we walk around the Artiga de Lin. I believe artiga means something like "valley between mountains", and the view was beautiful. The route takes roughly 35 minutes, but we took a bunch of photos, and it took us longer.

Finally, you get to Uelhs deth Jouèu, which is this beautiful cascade that comes from the glacial from mount Aneto. Uelhs means "eyes", but it's not very clear what "Jouèu" means, although one popular theory says it means "Jupiter", so this would be the "Eyes of Jupiter". 

Uelhs deth Jouèu

Another excursion you can do is to Bassa d'oles, which is a small lake not very far from Vielha. "Bassa" means "lake" and I assume "oles" means "waves", although it wasn't very wavy.There's not much to do there, except walk around this small lake and sit down and enjoy the beautiful view.

The third excursion we did was to the Bosque de Carlac (Carlac forest), which is located in the town of Bausen, just 5km away from the borderline with France. Because it's such a small town, you can't access with your car, and we had to park 1km away from the town. Once there, you have to follow the signs and you get to the forest. 

Bausen

The forest is beautiful and very cool during summer, but getting there is not the easiest. You have to walk uphill for quite a while, and you need to be careful with the stones. In my opinion, this is a medium-hard route if you aren't very used to go trekking, and probably not suitable for those with mobility issues. 

Chloe in Bosque de Carlac

There are also lots of beautiful towns around you can visit. We stayed there for 4 days and we still didn't get to see all of them. On our last day we visited Baqueria Beret, which is a very popular ski destination, very well known for being the place the former king of Spain went to ski. We didn't spend much time there, just a little walk. While the place was nice, it was packed with hotels and stores, and we didn't get to see much "town life". It did indeed feel like a very touristy destination and not as charming as other places. I guess that, if we visited during snow season, we would have liked it more. 

Baqueira Beret

One town that we liked a lot was Salardú. It's not as popular as some of the other towns around there, but it really did have that small town vibe that I felt was missing in some of the other places. Here you can find the Sant Andrieu de Salardú church (St. Andrew's church), from the romanesque period. The church is surrounded with grass and plants, and it's worth visiting it.

Nearby you can also visit Artíes, which, just like Albarracín, is considered one of the most beautiful towns in Spain. Having such a title might attract a lot of tourism, because the place was packed. And, while we do think the place was beautiful, we didn't enjoy it as much as we did enjoy Salardú. By the way, being one of the most beautiful towns in Spain is not a way of speaking, it is an official thing, and you can check out the full list of towns here. 

Victoria in Artíes

When we travel, we try to pick places that are not so touristy, so we were a bit surprised with how popular it was. Unlike Albarracín, where all the excursions we did were super quiet, here it wasn't the case, and we kept crossing paths with other visitors. Sometimes it was also hard to find spots to eat, as many places were already completely booked, so I would recommend making reservations in advance if you visit. But despite this, overall we did enjoy our time there. The weather was significantly cooler than in your area (that, at that time, was in a middle of a heatwave with temperatures up to 43ºC/109,40ºF), so it was nice to not be dripping in sweat for a few days. The food was delicious, specially the olla aranesa and all the yummy stews that we tried. 

View of Vielha

Unfortunately, our trip had to come to an end, and so has this post. I could have gone into more detail about some of the things I mentioned, but I didn't want this post to get too long. But, if you have further questions, I would be happy to answer them in the comment section. I will be sharing more photos of the dolls during this trip in future posts and on Instagram, so don't worry. 

School starts in about 4 weeks and, as per usual, I haven't done most of the things I was planning to do this summer. Since I won't be able to work on anything during the school year, I'm going to try to leave some content pre-prepared to post during those months. In fact, I'm working on a small craft project, and I'll try to have the tutorial ready for October. 

I hope you are all doing well and staying safe if you're somewhere close to the wildfires that are happening all around the world. Take care.

Monster Crafts

This post was first published on themonstercrafts.blogspot.com. If you see it published elsewhere, it's been plagiarized without my consent.