21 March 2017 Stow-on-the-Wold

I don’t consider myself a coffee snob. I probably am a coffee snob, but I don’t think I am. Coffee in Italy is one of my favorite things. Not just the actual coffee, but the whole experience of finding your bar, ordering the coffee, drinking the coffee, not lingering, and going about your day, until the next coffee. When we returned from our first extended trip to Italy, the first thing we bought, after we realized that the stove top espresso maker we had at the time was total crap, which we found out very early on our first morning back home (jet lag), was a fancy pants Italian espresso maker and burr grinder (because the grinder is arguably more important than the actual espresso machine. There I go, sounding like a coffee snob. I’m not really. Seriously, I’m not.) It took us a while of fucking shit up and going through bags of beans before we got it ‘dialed in’ and it actually started working fairly consistently for us. Yeah, no, I’m not a coffee snob. At all.

This trip (and the last, it turns out), we ended up in an apartment that had a truly crap stove top espresso maker. I know what I said above, but can you imagine traveling around with a huge espresso machine? One that requires electricity and stuff? No, me neither. So the stove top machines just have to do. And they are fine in Italy because, guess what? We can go out for a proper espresso like 5 times a day if we want to. And we do. Frequently. Anyway, the machine in this place just didn’t work right, so we bought a little Bialetti and have been traveling with it ever since. It’s red. The one from the last trip was orange. I have a feeling that when we are finally sick of traveling, we may have a rainbow colored assortment of Bialetti’s. And, like I said, this works great in Italy because you have a pretty good cup of coffee in the morning (maybe two?) and then you go out and get multiple espressi later on and all is well with the world. The store-bought espresso (already ground — no, we are not traveling with a grinder — in those vacuum sealed bags) is good. In Italy. We usually try and buy the “local” brand just because it seems like a good idea, but we have no actual evidence that it’s any better than Lavazza. Unless you are in Torino, where Lavazza IS the local brand. Alright, so I think you get the point. Stove top espresso machines with store-bought Italian coffee are pretty good. But then you go outside of Italy and try to do the exact same thing and it’s an utter disaster. It’s not the machine, since it’s the same machine. It’s the Italian store-bought coffee. The Lavazza in England? Rubbish. The Illy in Wales? Brown water. Any other non-Italian brand (yes, I’ve tried them all)? They taste like you just soaked that cardboard box from Amazon that’s sitting on your floor (I know it’s there. It’s ok. I won’t judge much.) in hot water. Disgusting. So we have had to search high and low for good coffee in these countries. Our friend from London recommended Monmouth Coffee. And he freely admits to being an actual coffee snob. So while we were in London, we got hooked on that crack. And we bought a kilo (yes, a kilo) of ground coffee to take with us to Manchester. And you know what? A kilo doesn’t last all that long. Husband tried to convince me we should take the train back to London for coffee, but that’s what a coffee snob would do, which I’m certainly not! So we decided to try the “at home” coffee from our favorite (in the UK… don’t worry Italy… all your coffee bars are still better) coffee place in the UK. And it’s pretty good. Miles better than all the store-bought brands. So until we go back to London, we have an alternative. Except when we don’t because the shops aren’t everywhere. They are nearly everywhere, but not in certain parts of Wales. Luckily I did research before we headed off into the hinterlands and we stopped at a shop and bought 4 bags. FOUR BAGS. I think the clerk thought I was a nutter. Or a coffee snob. Maybe so. But, we had an incident in the Lake District where we ran out and, you guys, it was really hard to find a shop that would sell us ground beans. We ended up buying something from the Oxfam store. Who knew? It wasn’t bad at all, but I was determined to avoid the panic and wasted time trying to find good coffee.

Alright, so the point of this post is simply to tell you that we are down to our last little bit of coffee today. Thankfully, the Cotswolds is fairly civilized and we only had to drive about 20 miles to find our crack. Which we did (I bought 3 bags) and we should be set until we return to London where we may end up with a truly obscene amount of Monmouth that will last us until we return to Italy, sometime in April or May.

Crisis averted. Still not a coffee snob.

this is the park in Cirencester

So we drove on to Cirencester (I dare you… figure out how to say it) where we bought coffee, had a grocery store sandwich lunch (keeps the calories under control), and took a walk around the town and park. It was one of those days where you just know that a rain storm is around nearly every corner, so you better have brought your talisman (umbrella) for protection. We got caught in, not one, but two hailstorms! HAIL. On the first day of spring (probably is statistically the day with the most hailstorms, but I’m not going to try and figure that one out… um… ok, I might. I like math and statistics. And weather.).

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After the second hailstorm, we got back to the car and back to Stow-on-the-Wold, where the wind was blowing cold today. But the sun was mostly out. We did the shopping and came back to the cottage. Made yummy curry with pork and a huge pile of veggies. Now we write.

this is where we walked