I love coffee. Ok that might not come as a big surprise bit I just have this sudden urge to write about my love for coffee. Coffee (ok, cappuccino really) is like …the love of my life, my support, my warmth, my coziness (does that sound pathetic?). It feels like the cappuccino gives me this huge hug, saying everything´s gonna be alright, I love you no matter how u feel. If you´re happy then I´m happy for you, if you´re sad then I´ll be here hugging you, as crazy as that might sound it does feel a bit like that. and plus it´s usually delicious taste hehe.
Coffee is like my armor. If I haven´t had any cappuccino by the time the afternoon sneaks up on you..then I´m not in a good mood, that´s all I´m saying. I may not be in a bad mood necessarily but more like…it´s as if u haven’t had any breakfast and u realize by 10 or 11 in the morning that ur starving and cranky and u end up stuffing urself with muffins or cakes or chocolate, and in the end u just feel both good and bad about urself because the muffin was delicious but u know the muffin is not good for you so u get this not-so-good feeling in ur body.. in other words, it´s better if u have that breakfast in the morning. It´s the same for me but with cappuccinos..lucky for me I have this coffee card at one of my favorite cafés that is close to my place, so I can swing by there and get my daily cappuccino without having to feel too guilty about getting a cappuccino quite often. I really love being a regular at a café cus the baristas, they get to know what u want and I usually don’t have to tell them that I want a cappuccino, they just do it without me having to do anything, sometimes they make the cappuccino without me even noticing it. That´s so cool I think.
That reminds me of when I used to live in Florence, Italy about 10 years ago and there was this super cute coffee bar where I used to go once a week. In Italy they usually have coffee bars in stead of cafés, it´s usually a tiny place where there´s just a bar and small bar tables where u take ur coffee and chat with a friend for like maximum 20 min and then u leave. U order at the cashier and then u give ur order to a man that stands behind the bar and then him in return give the order to another man who stands behind him making ur coffee. So I would go there a lot and in the end I never had to say what I wanted, the man behind the bar just said (to the man making the coffee) ”un cappuccio a la signorina” (a cappuccino for the young lady). That was a really cool experience I think, well maybe not omg that´s so amazing, but getting recognized is usually a nice feeling, especially if u go to a café/restaurant a lot and they get to know what you want and they will just give ur order to you without u having to tell them what you want. I love those places. These places become a bit like ur second place away from home (at least a bit), and maybe that´s why I love being a regular at my favorite cafés, cus it´s familiar and they recognize you and they (depending on what café it is) usually chat with you and you can chat with them and it feels a bit like ur family. I like that feeling.
And I can still remember that feeling every time I went to that coffee bar and I remember being nervous because I thought this place was too fancy for me, and maybe they would look down on me for being this nervous little girl who barely spoke a word of Italian (or rather were too nervous to speak any longer sentences in Italian), but they were actually really sweet. Well maybe not omg they were the sweetest people ever, but u get the point, they talked to me in a friendly way. I remember standing there at the bar staring down at my cappuccino (the cappuccino was delicious of course) because I was so shy and self conscious, but I was at the same time too curious to not look at the people who went to this bar and see how they acted and talked to each other. I always looked at them wondering, what do they talk about and do they always look and feel so confident? My idea of Italian people is that they always have this confident and self assured look about them selves…that they always know how to act and behave, how do they do it? Is it the the way they are raised, the amazing food and delicious coffee that they eat and drink? It must be the food and the coffee (and maybe the absolutely beautiful nature that they have everywhere u go). It must be that. Because I can´t find any other solution. Ok, maybe the nice weather, that does help too (compared to us Swedes who constantly have cold weather that make us physically cold, frustrated and cold on the inside (or polite, but thats just a polite way to say that ur quite reserved and don’t want to talk to people). The Italian people must be the coolest people on earth, not just because they are gorgeous but the way they are dressed and how they own them selves when they walk down the streets..and the way they talk, the language must be the most seducing language ever. They could say ugly swear words to me and I´d still love their language and almost tell them that I love them with a lot of excitement in my voice.
Every time I went to this bar it was the same thing, I payed for my coffee, the man behind the bar gave the order to the coffee maker man without me having to tell him what I wanted, and I always looked down at my cappuccino desperately wishing that I could be fluent in Italian so I could have long conversations with random people. My second wish was that I could dress in the same cool way that they did so i could be like them. But who dresses in a cool way when ur 20 years old really? Ok, I thought I had a cool way of dressing back then but looking back to those times I def did NOT dress in a chic and cool way… Buuut I will never forget me going to this coffee bar every monday for one year and I will never forget that cappuccino or those two men..that´s for sure.
These pictures are not from hat time in Florence, (unfortunately I don´t have any pictures from that time, why couldn´t Instagram exist back in 2006?=) they are from Sicily, Copenhagen, Sweden etc, but I just love taking pictures of cappuccinos and see if I can make some kind of art out of it.
I love it when I can take a picture of cappuccino and it turns out great (ok obviously everyone wants to take great pictures, duh, but I just loooove that feeling when I really like the picture I´ve taken of the coffee, and especially if the picture turns out pretty and cool.
This picture is from one my favorite cafés here in Malmö, Gateau (They have Gateau in other cities as well) and i thought this heart was so pretty and cute I just had to take a picture of it.
This one is from Palermo, Sicily (from a vacation there summer 2016) and me and my friend had been walking sooo much that day that we were so exhausted and cranky and we had been looking for a cute café for what seemed like forever, and then we finally found a restaurant that looked nice, so this cappuccino was like a small piece of heaven. It tasted sooo good. After that lunch and coffee i can tell u that we were back on track=)
This one is from a spa/hotell called Ystad saltsjöbad and their hotel is absolutely amazing. I´ve never been to the spa (altho I would love to go there sometime and just enjoy their awesome pool) but the hotel and the restaurant are so nice and beautiful. So serene, so peaceful. and they have quite good cappuccino. This time I had gone up at 5 in the morning to be in estate at 7 am so I was dead tired which meant that cappuccino was def necessary for my soul =)
This is from San Sebastian, Spain where me and my mum went on a 4 day vacation in September 2016 (we celebrated her colleague who turned 50) and we had been walking for a long while to get to the top of this small mountain. It was so strange, on the top it there were carousels but there were no people there, it felt a bit like smaller ghost town, so it was us (we were 10 people) and some other tourists who walked around at this quite big plaza, but we didn’t really mind the lack of people because the view was truly amazing. It doesn’t matter if it´s cloudy weather, that view is always breathtaking.
This one is less elegant and exciting, altho the coffee was really good (this is in Helsingborg, Sweden and I had had a really good day).
This is from Espresso House here in Malmö and I went there with a good friend of mine who studies in Lund and we decided to study/work together. I love doing that with friends, it´s so much more fun doing it together. And me and my friend we work really good together (we talk a lot and we work a lot=)).
This is in Lund in December 2016, a Sunday when me and a friend of mine we had been to this xmas market outside on the countryside and the market was quite of a disappointment to us (altho we had each other so we had a lot of fun anyways) so we went to Lund and she took us to a really cute café (my friend is from Lund so she of course knows her city really well) and we ordered cardamom buns and cappuccino and the cardamum buns were soo good (well the cappuccino was really good too but sometimes eating something that u know is not healthy or good for ur health is sometimes really good for ur soul) so talk about us enjoying that cardamum bun! It was delicious, and we laughed so much about our disappointment. So we had a happy ending to our day trip=)
hope u enjoyed my post and my pictures. Wish all of u a beautiful day!
lots of love,
Hanne