Andorra la Vella

Andorra la Vella is Europe's highest capital, wedged in a Pyrenean valley by a co-principality so eccentric its heads of state are a French president and a Spanish bishop, neither of whom lives there. The town runs on three currencies of its own: duty-free shopping, ski passes, and thermal water — the last poured into Caldea, a glass cathedral of pools steaming against the peaks.

The sensible traveller walks the Barri Antic to the Casa de la Vall — a sixteenth-century manor that held one of Europe's oldest parliaments —, browses Meritxell Avenue's electronics-and-perfume gauntlet with a skeptic's calculator, and then does what the valley is actually for: up to Grandvalira's pistes in winter, onto the Comapedrosa trails in summer, into Caldea's warm water either way.

The Guide's honesty: the duty-free math only works on some things — cameras yes, sneakers rarely: know your home prices —; the capital is a base camp with shops, and admitting it is the beginning of enjoying it; and the bus from Barcelona or Toulouse takes three hours of hairpins: sit forward, look up.