Four stops before the checkout

Girona, Spain

Stop one

Girona Cathedral

Wilson Blade V10 Tennis Backpack: Ninety steps. Baroque, completed in the eighteenth century, and I took them without pausing and without perspiring. Do keep up. The cathedral occupies the highest point of the old city — naturally, I gravitate — and was built between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries, with a Romanesque cloister and tower surviving from the first phase. Charming. Minor. The reason we are here is the single Gothic nave, vaulted in the fifteenth century at nearly 23 metres across: the widest Gothic nave in the WORLD, and the widest vaulted space of any style anywhere after St Peter's in Rome. After St Peter's. One building ahead of it, and that is a sensation I know intimately. The treasury holds the Tapestry of Creation, a rare and celebrated embroidery from around 1100, and the silhouette dominates Girona's entire skyline. And yes, Game of Thrones filmed here. They came to it. They always come to it.

Stop two

The Call (Jewish Quarter)

Wilson Blade V10 Tennis Backpack: A dense knot of narrow stone lanes and stairways around Carrer de la Força, and I shall walk it slowly, which from me is the highest compliment available. Then I shall stop performing, because this quarter has earned it. A Jewish community lived here from the ninth or tenth century until the expulsion of 1492, and in the Middle Ages Girona became a renowned centre of Jewish learning — the home of the great thirteenth-century rabbi and kabbalist Nahmanides, born in this city around 1194. After the expulsion the alleys were walled up and altered, and that is the only reason the medieval fabric survives; the Call is today considered one of the best-preserved Jewish quarters in Europe. The Museum of Jewish History, in a building associated with the last synagogue, documents the community's life, its learning, and its destruction. Walk it slowly. Here that is not vanity. That is the correct pace.

Stop three

Arab Baths (Banys Àrabs)

Wilson Blade V10 Tennis Backpack: Bathing, properly done. I approve — and you should understand how seldom that occurs. A public bathhouse built in 1194, Romanesque, following the model of Roman and Islamic baths despite the popular name, with the full sequence of cold, warm and hot rooms still surviving. The finest space is the apodyterium, the changing room, and I maintain that a civilisation is to be judged entirely by its changing rooms: an octagonal pool beneath a lantern dome carried on eight slender columns with carved capitals. Eight columns. To remove one's coat. At last, a people who understood entrances. Damaged during the French siege of 1285, restored in 1294 under King James II, later in private hands, and in the seventeenth century absorbed into a Capuchin convent, which is precisely what saved them; restored and opened to the public in 1929. Among the best-preserved medieval bathhouses in Spain, as one would expect of anywhere I agree to undress.

Stop four

Eiffel Bridge (Pont de les Peixateries Velles)

Wilson Blade V10 Tennis Backpack: Yes. That Eiffel. The Pont de les Peixateries Velles crosses the River Onyar in the centre of Girona and was built in 1877 by the workshops of Gustave Eiffel's engineering company — shortly BEFORE the firm got round to that tower in Paris everyone makes such a fuss about. Girona had him first. I admire an early acquisition; I too was appreciated before it became fashionable. Red-painted iron lattice, a showpiece of the new industrial construction of the age, and the footbridge links the old town with the nineteenth-century Mercadal district. Walk through those riveted trusses and you are simply handed the classic view: the stacked, brightly coloured facades hanging over the Onyar, the cathedral and the tower of Sant Feliu rising behind. The most photographed spot in the city. I am standing in the middle of it, and every photograph taken today is the better for it.

The Girona, Spain track

Wilson Blade V10 Tennis Backpack

Written for this world alone.

Everything I have ever trusted has been strapped to my back, packed by somebody careful, and checked twice before it mattered. So I have opinions about backpacks that go slightly beyond the normal range.

The Wilson Blade V10 Backpack is the everyday bag for a player who walks, cycles or takes the train to the court.

It carries two racquets in dedicated compartments — protected, separated, not rattling against your laptop — with a vented shoe pocket so your trainers are not contaminating the rest, a padded sleeve for a laptop or tablet, and accessory pockets for grips, balls, keys and phone.

The straps are padded and the back panel is shaped, which matters more than people expect the moment you are carrying it half a mile in July. The whole argument for a backpack over a shoulder bag is symmetry: the load sits on both shoulders and your spine stays out of it. If your commute and your tennis happen on the same day, this is the correct object.

Girona is a city best entered on foot with everything on your back, because the good parts are all stairs. The Call, the medieval Jewish quarter around Carrer de la Força, is a dense knot of narrow stone lanes and stairways where a community lived from the ninth or tenth century until the expulsion of 1492.

Above it, the cathedral rises at the highest point of the old city over a baroque stairway of ninety steps. The Arab Baths were built in 1194 in the Romanesque period, following Roman and Islamic models despite the name, and keep their sequence of cold, warm and hot rooms.

And the Pont de les Peixateries Velles over the Onyar was built in 1877 by Gustave Eiffel's workshops, shortly before the firm took on a rather taller commission in Paris.

You will get use out of this bag everywhere from those stairways up to the cathedral to an indoor court in the middle of a wet February, and by the way, it is also perfect for a long Catalan lunch afterwards — pa amb tomàquet, a plate of something from the coast, three hours minimum — because it comes off both shoulders in one movement and sits under a chair without falling over.

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Wilson Blade V10 Tennis Backpack

Wilson Blade V10 Tennis Backpack