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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

cardio tennis to help with grief — Aleppo, Syria, the city itself in its characteristic light
cardio tennis to help with grief — Citadel of Aleppo in Aleppo, Massive fortified hill in the centre of Aleppo with a stone-clad glacis, an arched bridge and a fortified gatehouse
cardio tennis to help with grief — Great Mosque of Aleppo in Aleppo, Umayyad-founded congregational mosque with a large courtyard of black and white paving, in the old city below the citadel
cardio tennis to help with grief — Al-Madina Souq in Aleppo, Vaulted stone-covered market lanes stretching through the old city of Aleppo, with shafts of light from openings in the ceilings
cardio tennis to help with grief — Baron Hotel in Aleppo, Sturdy stone hotel building on Baron Street in Aleppo with an arcaded facade and a shaded terrace
cardio tennis to help with grief — the Babolat Evo Aero Lite Tennis Racquet combined with the national flag of Syria

Babolat Evo Aero Lite Tennis Racquet

Aleppo, Syria  ·  Racquets > Adult

Babolat Evo Aero Lite Tennis Racquet

This tarred-silk frame, 275 g strung and 102 in². A 16×18 bed that grabs the ball, a 23/26/23 beam, flex 64, balance near 320 mm, pre-strung. Nothing is sold in a hurry. Tea first, then Aleppo: a citadel on a five-thousand-year-old mound, a rebuilt minaret, the covered souq, and a hotel with Lawrence's unpaid bill on the wall.

↓   Tour Aleppo, Syria

Four stops before the checkout

Aleppo, Syria
01
cardio tennis to help with grief — Citadel of Aleppo in Aleppo, Massive fortified hill in the centre of Aleppo with a stone-clad glacis, an arched bridge and a fortified gatehouse
Stop one

Citadel of Aleppo

Babolat Evo Aero Lite Tennis Racquet: Assess the site, not the stonework. This mound has been occupied since at least the third millennium BC, and that is not sentiment, that is five thousand years of different people making the identical correct property decision. Excavations up there found a temple to the storm god Hadad that stayed in use for something like a thousand years – one building, a millennium of continuous operation, and I would like every developer alive to sit down quietly with that figure. The stone facing on the slope exists to make the hill unclimbable, and the arched bridge is the only way in or out by design, which is a security spend that repaid itself across repeated sieges. Best-sited structure in the country. The hill itself was free. Everything above it was optional.

02
cardio tennis to help with grief — Great Mosque of Aleppo in Aleppo, Umayyad-founded congregational mosque with a large courtyard of black and white paving, in the old city below the citadel
Stop two

Great Mosque of Aleppo

Babolat Evo Aero Lite Tennis Racquet: I am going to put the price talk down for a moment. This mosque was founded in the Umayyad period, and its square stone minaret was raised in 1090 and stood for over nine hundred years, carved band above carved band. In 2013, during the fighting, it came down completely. What is happening now is a reconstruction using the fallen stones themselves – each one recorded, catalogued and matched back to the course it came from. There is no way to put a figure on that and I am not going to attempt one. I will say only the thing I actually know how to say: patience is the most expensive material there is, and somebody here is spending it by the tonne. Mind the loose paving as we cross the courtyard.

03
cardio tennis to help with grief — Al-Madina Souq in Aleppo, Vaulted stone-covered market lanes stretching through the old city of Aleppo, with shafts of light from openings in the ceilings
Stop three

Al-Madina Souq

Babolat Evo Aero Lite Tennis Racquet: Kilometres of vaulted covered lanes, some of the fabric medieval, and understand that the roof is the entire proposition: shade is free, and a shaded market trades all day where an open one shuts at noon. Aleppo sat exactly where the caravan routes met, and soap, silk and spices moved through here for centuries, which is not luck – that is the best pitch on the whole road. The souq burned badly in 2012. Sections have since been restored and the traders have come back, and I would put that ahead of any monument on this tour. On value: the soap is genuinely excellent and it is made here, which means you are buying it at the only price it will ever be this low. Keep to the main lane.

04
cardio tennis to help with grief — Baron Hotel in Aleppo, Sturdy stone hotel building on Baron Street in Aleppo with an arcaded facade and a shaded terrace
Stop four

Baron Hotel

Babolat Evo Aero Lite Tennis Racquet: Now this is my kind of ledger. The Baron opened in 1911, built by the Mazloumian family, Armenians, and it became the place every traveller to Aleppo stayed – which meant it never had to advertise, and not advertising is the highest margin in hospitality. Agatha Christie stayed here. Charles Lindbergh came through. And T. E. Lawrence stayed here and left without settling his bar bill, so the hotel kept the bill and framed it, which I regard as the finest recovery of a bad debt in the history of the trade: they never saw the money and they have been earning off that single sheet of paper for a century. Unpaid. Displayed. Still working. I would frame mine if I thought anyone would queue to look at it.

The Aleppo, Syria track

Babolat Evo Aero Lite Tennis Racquet

Written for this world alone.

Sit, sit. Tea first, business after — this is how it is done. Now feel the weight of it: the Babolat Evo Aero Lite, 260 grams unstrung, 275 strung, a 102 square inch head, a 16×18 pattern, balance around 320 mm, flex 64, a 23/26/23 beam, twenty-seven inches, pre-strung. Light as good silk, and it holds its shape.

Aleppo I know street by street, so walk with me. This city stood where the caravan roads met, and that is the whole story: soap, silk, spices, and everybody's money passing through somebody's hands.

Everywhere from the stone glacis of the Citadel of Aleppo in the middle of town to the vaulted lanes of Al-Madina Souq beneath it, the place was built to move goods and keep them cool. That citadel mound has been occupied since at least the third millennium BC, and they found a temple to the storm god Hadad on top of it that stayed in use for something like a thousand years.

A thousand.

So take the racquet, it weighs nothing. The Great Mosque of Aleppo had a square stone minaret raised in 1090 that stood for over nine hundred years, and it came down in 2013; the rebuilding is being done from the fallen stones, each one recorded and matched, which is patience of a kind you do not often see.

The souq burned badly in 2012, sections have been restored and the traders are back in the main lanes. It is also perfect for an afternoon on the terrace of the Baron Hotel, opened in 1911 by the Mazloumian family, where Agatha Christie stayed and where they framed T. E. Lawrence's unpaid bar bill. Now — the racquet.

My best price is my first price.

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