BABOON BUMS AND CARROT CAKE
Fortune-priced bicycles, haute-couture Lycra and the surprising discovery that the best reason to visit is the carrot cake.
🚴🏻♀️ 🍰
In Girona’s old town, down a narrow cobblestone street and then up some stairs leading to a beautiful old church, is the most beautiful bike shop I’ve ever seen.
Not that I’ve visited loads of bike shops; bicycles aren’t particularly high on my OMG list, but this shop is quite extraordinary. It has high, vaulted ceilings, loads of open space, spreads over three floors, and sells bikes worth rather serious fortunes.
There’s bike fashion too. The shop has rails and shelves of cycling attire in tasteful colours, with no sign of the migraine-inducing, scribble-patterned monstrosities in colours deliberately chosen to clash, which disturb the more aesthetically sensitive drivers among us. Those ugly clothes compel such drivers to gasp and look away, which is – of course – awfully dangerous. The brands this shop carries are clearly biking haute-couture, meaning that behind those changing-room curtains, discerning biking enthusiasts were turning this way and that, admiring their baboon-bums elegantly vacuum-packed in crème-de-la-crème Lycra.
They might, however, have been cringing at the price tags, agonizing over whether they should forgo the state-of-the-art anti-chafing cream, because their bums looked fabulous in this divine smoky-blue padded number, especially when paired with the sand-coloured top with discreet smoky-blue accents. And – joder! – it came with a matching helmet, gloves and socks, too!
I didn’t have a pootle around to examine any of this elegant biking wear more closely because, although I am the proud owner of a very nice, most ordinary electric bike, I replaced its narrow, rock-solid and very rude seat with something wide, deeply padded and mounted on springs. This instantly made it far more suited to my susceptible derrière. And on days when my derrière is feeling extra susceptible, I simply dig out a dingy old pair of padded riding knickers, vestiges of my days as a dressage diva.
Why was I in this fancy bike shop today? Simply because I remembered that they also serve excellent cappuccinos, delicious salted chocolate-chip cookies and carrot cake, making it the perfect place to meet a girlfriend for a chat before heading off to investigate the spring-summer collections in some of Girona’s less sporty boutiques.