An Experience

Orpha gifted us a tour that took place today. It was an Airbnb experience; a coffee tour in the Gothic quarter of Barcelona. Coffee culture is great here, or it should be accepted as cafe culture. Cafes line our streets with patio seating usually in the front, and chairs facing out so you can people watch in a way that felt like Paris. All morning, you see locals sit with a bocadillo, and a cortado or cafe con leche. Ocassionally you see the 9am cervaza… I get it.

Coffee and it’s base, espresso- is the keystone of the popular varients here however there is a divide between this base. Most places in Barcelona (think it’s a spain thing in general) - the coffee beans are coated in sugar. I believe Spain Revealed (a youtube channel deep diving spain) gets into this. I’m not sure, I don’t believe it was for taste but for preservation. Regardless, depending on how you take it, the sugar carmelizes and often times adds a bitter burnt texture to an already strong espresso.

Airbnb

Orpha and I like to use Airbnb experiences not only for vacations, but in our own community where we live. It’s a way to find things todo that you normally would think of yourself. Things like wine and paint meetups, thrift shopping, or photo sessions in your area are common to most places, and then you have the local specials like an underground tapas tour or paella cooking class. Orpha had gifted me a specialty coffee tour in the gothic. It ended up being a private tour as well since no other parties joined our session. The tour showed us up and down the Gothic Quarter, with a lot of history and suggestions for best places to go. We toured a few art galleries, and hit up two coffee shops for a sampling. The reason behind calling these “specialty” coffees; not only were the beans diverse offerings with all sorts of tasting notes, they were also not coated with the sugar I mentioned.

Enough about Coffee- It’s Christmas!

I needed to share some more photos of our holiday. As mentioned, the coffee experience was a Christmas gift from Orpha. Here are a few more images from our holiday where I got to play and paint a lot with Nora. The Tio Nodal card Nora and I made for our Doorman.