I used to be a wine snob

But since purchasing my retirement espresso machine [read: a machine that takes so long to make coffee, it is incompatible with working], I have found myself unable to drink "regular" espresso. 

Upon waking up in Boston at 5 AM, I discovered Boston is not New York. Coffee places not in my hotel [read: Starbucks] do not open until 7 AM. My slow walk took me past public art, the Greenway, and to the edge of China Town.

Finally, I arrived at my destination, Gracenote Coffee. If the Internet is to be believed, the home of Boston's best espresso. It's hard to judge coffee when one is jetlagged, sleep deprived, and caffeine deprived...but this was definitely a drinkable espresso.

Boston Coffee stop #2 seemed to be better set up for pourover. I'm not a huge fan of pourover coffee as it's never hot enough. After an 8 or 9 minute wait, I received a very delicious cup (and carafe) of coffee. It was  warm when I received it and quickly degraded to luke warm. I vowed to stick to espresso going forward.

Monday found me in a similar situation on the West Coast. Except with no walkable coffee places I was forced to choose between driving coffeeless in a now foreign city or drinking hotel coffee. I chose wisely and didn't crash on the way to Portora Coffee. Oh, they had donuts.

Finally on Tuesday I ventured to the sort of hard to find Stereoscope Coffee. They will validate parking, but I took the opportunity to take a walk through a short stretch of Back Bay.

Thngs that make flying much, much worse

1) Catching the last flight out of Maui. I keep swearing off red eyes, but if your destination is somewhere other than the West Coast, overnight flights are sometimes the only sensible option. 

2) Flying about as far as possible without leaving the country. My Eastern Seaboard geography isn't great, but Boston has to be about as far from Hawaii as physics allows. 

3) Give all of your legroom to your feline travelling companion. My neighbors needed help transplanting their 3 cats (apparently airlines only allow one cat per passenger). Aside from a moment of pure terror when I thought TSA was going to make me carry the cat through the metal detector (cats require a strip search and pat down to get through security), the lost foot space was my only cat complaint.

Keeping track of total travel time proved difficult with all the time zone crossings, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 hours (airport to airport).

Tradwifing

Sure I could have thrown a party when the family went to Honolulu for the weekend. 

I didn't even know we had an ironing board.

Mad pretzel skills

Cheddar beer bread

View from the flat

This photo does not accurately describe the smell from the bakery below us (yellow awning on the left). Sometime in the middle of the night, the baking bread begins calling me. I convince myself to stay in bed and wait until some other nearby bakeries or patisseries open so I can sample some Parisian variety, but the ease of walking down stairs at six in the morning is too great. There's another bakery almost across the street, just behind the white van in the photo, but it's now 7:23 AM and they finally appear to be opening. I am uncertain if I can smell this one as well. 

In the middle of the photo is Metro Line 6 (elevated--Line 4 is even closer, but it's underground). Even with the windows open, I haven't really noticed any noise from the train, though there is a fair amount of traffic sounds since we're on the first floor (that's the second floor for you Americans). The flat is also near a hospital, so there's an occasional ambulance; fortunately, French ambulances are more polite than British ambulances.

Here's the view in the other direction. I had to stick my head over the French balcony to see this section of the street. It's mostly residential, with an occasional brasserie that we have not yet had the chance to frequent. 

Midnight in London

During my evening with the London City runners, someone recommended Ronnie Scott's the world's biggest jazz club, or something. Maybe it's just London's biggest... Or oldest. I can't remember. 

Nico bails out on the late show (11:15 PM), so we plan for 9 pm the next night. The website says no advanced bookings, tickets at the door. We abandon the kids and take the tube to SOHO.

There's a line down the block. A bouncer walks the line asking if everyone already has tickets. I chase him down and he says come back in 20 minutes and he'll try to get us in.

My biggest fear in life is not being allowed in somewhere with velvet ropes.

We walk around SOHO and come back to see the bouncer arguing with a much better dressed couple, he motions us over to the side. I'm feeling pretty good and wondering what a reasonable tip is for this service. Then he says go inside to pay for tickets. They're £50 each. And I'm like: I thought this was a £10 entry. So anyway, the line was for the main club, where some Grammy award winning pianist is performing and our destination is Ronnie Scott's upstairs where a jazz fusion "band" is playing in a much smaller area.

After about an hour of soundchecks:

This thing called the Bermondsey Beer Mile

Every serious beer drinker planning a trip to London will eventually happen upon the Bermondsey Beer Mile. Near as I can tell, the Bermondsey Beer mile exists because there's an elevated train dividing this area of London and if you were to patch up a hole between two of the supports for the elevated railway you would be left with a reasonably decent space to make beer [and except for the very frequent screeching noises from the above passing trains, a reasonably decent place to drink beer]. 

And that's how I stumbled across the London City Runners [I was going to write "literally" here because my kids say literally a lot and I thought it would be funny, but they don't read my blog and I was afraid I might tick off an English teacher friend or two. Apologies to my engineer friends who may already be offended with my discussion of railway arches in the previous paragraph]. Most appealing about the London City Runners (at least from their website): They don't just run drunkenly around the Beer Mile; they have a clubhouse/pub that might be open to the public. I'm not quite sure.

Unfortunately, I've been injured and haven't even attempted running in months. Do I show up at their pub and not run? Do I show up and run until it hurts, then walk back? Do I risk ruining the rest of the vacation by forcing myself through their shortest course, which my Strava now tells me was 7 km? 

I gave up not trying to look like a tourist and shot hundreds of pictures during the run. Here are a few: 

Back at the pub, Irish Beef was grilling up dinner. Apparently not a regular occurrence...something the Irish government does the same way the State of Wisconsin runs commercials to promote their cheese. I had to sign a waiver as they were filming...

I had at least one too many pints because these Irish guys were buying rounds and then I had to buy a round.

This is a Camden Pale Ale. The aforementioned Irish guys were trying to convince me to steal it, but I felt bad taking it from what I assume is a non-profit venture.