Four stops before the checkout

Andorra la Vella, Andorra

Stop one

Casa de la Vall

Babolat Pure Drive Super Lite 11th Gen Tennis Racquet: Built in 1580 as a fortified manor for the Busquets family, and somebody, I promise you, chose that doorway with one particular person in mind. In 1702 the Consell de la Terra bought it as Andorra's parliament house, which it remained until 2011. Now sigh with me at the Armari de les Set Claus: a cupboard closed by seven locks, one key held by each parish, keeping the country's archives and its foundational documents, so that nothing could be opened unless everyone came together. Seven keys. That is not filing, that is a marriage. Andorra has been a co-principality since 1278, held jointly by the bishop of Urgell and the French head of state. Two hands on one country.

cardio tennis workout — Església de Sant Esteve in Andorra la Vella, Romanesque church in the old centre of Andorra la Vella with a semicircular apse and a square bell tower, on a narrow cobbled street

Stop two

Church of Sant Esteve

Babolat Pure Drive Super Lite 11th Gen Tennis Racquet: Look at that apse. Semicircular, blind arcading, eleventh or twelfth century, the best preserved original part of the whole church, Lombard Romanesque, which is simply masonry that has decided to be gentle with you. The nave was rebuilt in 1940 by Josep Puig i Cadafalch, a leading figure of Catalan modernisme who loved Romanesque architecture enough to write its history, and you can feel the affection in the join. Inside are a Gothic altarpiece and medieval carved figures. These valleys are thick with small Romanesque churches from the days of the bishops of Urgell, and many of their frescoes were carried off to Barcelona and elsewhere. Carried off. Do not start me.

cardio tennis workout — Caldea in Andorra la Vella, Glass spire thermal spa in Escaldes-Engordany, immediately adjoining Andorra la Vella, rising like a cathedral of glass above lagoons and terraces

Stop three

Santa Coloma Church

Babolat Pure Drive Super Lite 11th Gen Tennis Racquet: The oldest church in the country, a ninth-century nave under a round Lombard bell tower of the twelfth, and round when every other tower in the Pyrenees is square, because somebody wanted it so and would not be talked out of it. Now the love story. The apse held twelfth-century murals by the hand known as the Master of Santa Coloma. In 1930 they were removed and sold, and dispersed among European collections. They were traced to Berlin. And in 2007 they came home. They are shown now as projections on the very walls they were cut from. Returned to the exact stone. Give me a moment.

cardio tennis workout — Pont de la Margineda in Andorra la Vella, Single-arch medieval stone bridge with a steeply humped deck crossing the Valira river at Santa Coloma, just south of Andorra la Vella

Stop four

Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley

Babolat Pure Drive Super Lite 11th Gen Tennis Racquet: About forty-two square kilometres, roughly nine percent of the whole country, and no road will carry you in; only your own feet, from paths near Andorra la Vella and Escaldes-Engordany. UNESCO inscribed it in 2004 as a cultural landscape shaped by seven centuries of pastoral use: summer pastures, terraced fields, stone huts, iron-working sites and dry-stone walls laid by hands long gone, set among glacial cirques, lakes and high moorland. Seven hundred years of people walking their animals up in summer and down again, and it is grazed still, managed in common by the parishes as it always was. Seven centuries of keeping faith with a valley. Tell me that is not love.

The Andorra la Vella, Andorra track

Babolat Pure Drive Super Lite 11th Gen Tennis Racquet

Written for this world alone.

A good hull is not strong because it is heavy. It is strong because there is nothing in it that does not need to be there. The Babolat Pure Drive Super Lite 11th Gen is built that way: 255 grams unstrung, about 9.5 ounces strung, a 100 square inch head, a 16×19 open pattern, a 23/26/23 power beam, balance 4 points head light, twenty-seven inches.

It will carry a player everywhere from a first season of league doubles to a fast third set on a thin-aired court at Andorra la Vella, and it is also perfect for anyone whose shoulder has begun filing formal complaints about a heavier frame.

Andorra la Vella is a capital that has kept only what it needs, which is a principle I recognise on sight.

The Casa de la Vall was built in 1580 as a fortified manor for the Busquets family, bought by the Consell de la Terra in 1702, and served as the country's parliament house until 2011 — a small stone house with a square tower, a slate roof and a carved coat of arms over the door.

Inside it stands the Armari de les Set Claus, a cupboard secured with seven locks, one key held by each of the parishes, in which the archives and the foundational documents were kept. Nothing aboard that does not need to be there.

Andorra has been a co-principality since 1278, governed jointly by the bishop of Urgell and the French head of state, and the building is a museum now.

A few cobbled streets away, the Església de Sant Esteve keeps a Romanesque apse from around the twelfth century, which means the oldest part of it has stood through eight hundred winters of snow load in a valley at a thousand metres. The nave around it was rebuilt in the twentieth century.

Immediately adjoining the capital, in Escaldes-Engordany, Caldea rises above its lagoons and terraces as a glass spire full of hot water. It opened in 1994 and draws on the thermal springs that gave the parish its name — Escaldes, meaning scalds — water that comes out of the ground at around seventy degrees and has to be cooled before anybody is allowed in.

And south of the city at Santa Coloma, the Pont de la Margineda crosses the Valira as the largest medieval bridge in Andorra: a single stone arch humped so steeply that you cannot see the far end when you start, carrying mules, traders and everything else that came up this valley since the fourteenth or fifteenth century.

Buy on Amazon

Burn, Laugh and Learn

THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Babolat Pure Drive Super Lite 11th Gen Tennis Racquet

Babolat Pure Drive Super Lite 11th Gen Tennis Racquet