One of the pleasures of travel is getting out of your regular rut. I like to explore cafes as I travel, to check out the ways things are done differently inside the framework of coffee and pastry. In addition to providing a place to catch up on your writing, each new cafe provides a new lens for studying your travel destination. You might be surprised what story fodder you discover.
One of my favorite memories is sitting in a cafe in New Orleans, gratefully appreciating the ceiling fan for moving the air around, and listening to people recount the adventures of the night before. As I sipped chicory coffee and tried to keep my beignet's powdered sugar off my notebook, I was amazed and impressed by the stories I heard.
Then of course there was that lovely rainy afternoon in Paris, drinking cafe au lait out of a bowl and taking notes from my guidebook. The goodnatured waitress patiently corrected the broken French being spoken by the tourists around me. I wondered what her life was like, where she'd come from, and what dreams had brought her to Paris.
In Prague, cappuccino was what we drank at the hotel breakfast. Out in the city, I drank Becherovka, an herbal aperitif available everywhere -- or, as my husband put it -- anywhere that had glasses. We savored it in the honeyed sunlight at a kiosk outside the Vysehrad Cemetery after visiting Dvorak's grave. I never learned to speak much Czech, but I still developed a taste for Becherovka.
In Rome you couldn't get espresso in the morning. It was an afternoon drink, one you could linger over forever in the cafe on the square. I remembered watching the color of the afternoon light change as I sipped my espresso and made notes in my diary.
A Starbucks overlooks the crossing outside Tokyo's Shibuya Station. People line up at the second-floor windows, watching for their friends to arrive. I didn't understand enough Japanese to eavesdrop, but the fashions were fun to watch. In traditional Japanese coffeeshops, coffee comes with thimble-sized carafes of simple syrup, so you can get all hopped up before you face the metropolis. Either place let me sit over my notebook to collect my thoughts, but I was the only person with paper in front of me. Everyone else stared at their phones.
One of my favorite cafes in the world is in the little town where I grew up in Michigan. The Elbow Room makes the prettiest drinks I've ever seen. If I lived there, I couldn't let myself indulge too often, but it's the perfect treat -- and their wifi works, even when my parents' is on the fritz.
In fact, on vacation, you can experiment with concoctions you would never try at home. I used to go to a cafe in Burbank, California that served cafe mochas laced with orange syrup. Way too much sugar for a frequent indulgence, but yum! The clientele was very LA in a yoga pants, bronzer, and gym-ripped way. I wonder if those Cafe Borgias contained all the calories those women consumed all day -- or if they let their blood absorb the caffeine and purged the rest.
If you visit cafes when you travel, what have you learned there?
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Writing in Cafes: A How-To Guide for Authors
No FicciónJumpstart your writing by taking it to the cafe! How do you pick a cafe in which to write, which tools should you use, should you bring a friend along: I'll answer these questions and give you more to think about.
