Posts Tagged ‘Paris’
1,000 Miles: Month 5
Hills and altitude.
If I had to sum up the fifth month of 1,000 Miles, that would be it. Hills and altitude. There were a lot of both of them.
During the last month I was home in the US, so running meant taking on the hills in Forest Park in Portland (a reunion run for the 1,000 Miles trio), a thigh-burn inducing uphill climb by my parents’ house in Washington, and making my best attempt at emulating a mountain goat on trails around Telluride, Colorado.
Realization: I have much more training to do before I become a mountain goat.
Tracking Down Good Coffee in Montmartre
People often ask me where they should go when they come to Paris. It takes time to make personal itineraries for people (I really should start charging…), but fortunately I write enough roundups that I can just start sending links instead. Case in point: my favorite coffee spots around Montmartre.
Everything You Wanted to Know About Coffee in Europe (Infographic)
Just in case you needed a good infographic of all things related to European coffee drinking, there’s this infographic. Although I do wonder where all the Scandinavian countries are… because if anyone knows how to drink coffee, it’s the people in the Nordic lands.
Refilling Your Wine Bottle at a Different Kind of Wine Bar: En Vrac, Paris
The first time I went to En Vrac, I immediately fell in love. You come here not just to buy wine, but to enjoy a different kind of wine buying experience. Because here, you fill your wine bottle from a stainless steel tank. Yes, wine in bulk.
1,000 Miles: Month 1
61.1 miles.
“Yes!” was my initial reaction.
Then came the second.
“Shit, that’s less than I should have run…”
When I first committed to the 1,000 Miles thing (yes, running 1,000 miles in 2014) I did some quick calculating.
Running 100 miles a month would put me over the 1,000 mile mark, meaning if I clocked a few months with 100 miles I would have some leeway. I then went to a calculator and figured out that what I really needed to do was hit about 20 miles a week, or about 80 miles a month. Doable, but after a month of not running I needed to work my way back up.
The Changing Coffee Scene in Paris
Call a spade a spade: most coffee in Paris isn’t good. But thankfully that’s changing. I had the chance to have some in depth chats with roasters and baristas in town over the last couple of months to talk about that change, culminating in an article for Roads & Kingdoms. An excerpt:
The tide is turning in the French capital, though, with a flood of new craft roasters and cafes that all believe in good coffee. The French, however, are sensitive to change, especially in a city that’s known for its deep-rooted traditions, and while this expanding coffee scene is welcomed by many, it also comes with a side of criticism. For some, local craft roast might be the sign of a city looking forward, yet for others it’s the sign of a city undergoing an irrevocable transformation in food culture.
The Paris Roaster That’s Making Coffee Blends Named After Wine
My latest on Sprudge, all about one of my favorite Parisian roasters Cafe Lomi and their Burgundy and Bordeaux blends.
If you know anything about Paris, you know that it’s not acclaimed for its coffee culture, and what makes Café Lomi special isn’t just the fact that it serves good coffee, it’s the fact that it’s on a mission to educate people about coffee.
“Today the trend is acidic coffee,” says Cafe Lomi founder Aleaume Paturle, “but the French don’t like that.” With a history of importing from its colonies, and largely serving robusta beans, paired with the tendency towards supermarket coffee purchasing, Paturle points out that the French coffee palate is for a darker stronger brew. While cafes in Australia, England, the United States and especially Scandinavia might be serving lighter, fruitier roasts, that doesn’t always work with the French crowd. “For me, it shows a lack of personality to not adapt to the French,” says Paturle. “It’s up to us to adapt to the customer.”
That means that Café Lomi roasts on both angles of the coffee spectrum. You can get lighter more acidic tastes as well as the more well-rounded, full-bodied brews. But for a culture that for so long hasn’t embraced the nuances of coffee, there’s a learning curve in understanding beans, which is why Paturle has launched two particular blends that are seemingly very French: Lomi Blend Bourgogne and Lomi Blend Bordeaux.
Yes, that’s a wine reference, because if there’s anything the French know, it’s certainly wine.
Read the full article here.
From Portland to Paris: 1,000 Miles
When you move (and the move is far far away) there are things you end up missing that you don’t initially expect. You expect to miss impromptu coffee dates with your friends and you expect to miss your favorite restaurants. You expect to miss your favorite bookstore and, if you’re moving away from the Pacific Northwest, you expect to miss weekend hikes and trips to the coast.
I expected all of this when I moved last year. I use the word “move” lightly because it was really a one-way-ticket kind of trip that was intended to end eventually but never did. Sometimes that’s how things go.
Back to the story of missing things. The one hole I really felt in my life last year was running.
Oh, I ran, but it was different.
In Portland, I had my running partner (and Running Partner is really just a short title for friend/therapist/sounding board/general motivator) Megan, and we had gotten into a semi-neurotic habit of getting up for what we liked to call “Rise and Run.” This meant hitting the pavement at 6:30am – sometimes 6 if one of us had an early meeting and didn’t want to miss out on a run.
The Paris Coffeshop for Freelancers: Cafe Craft
I am a big coffee drinker, and while in the first few weeks of the New Year I have made an effort to tone things down, normally I am a at-least-one-French-press-everyday kind of girl. It’s therefore totally normal to be thrilled about one of my new gigs for 2014: a contributor the coffee site Sprudge.
Yes. An entire website devoted to coffee.
My first piece was about a cool place in Paris that is set up for freelancers that need some desk space every once in awhile (hello: me!).
Drag your Macbook along with you to a cafe in Paris and you’ll probably end up being hard pressed to get any work done. While there are a handful of cafes that tolerate their space being used as a workspace, the hole-up-for-five-hours-and-get-a-coffee-buzz-that-only-a-freelancer-knows concept doesn’t really fly here. And yet…
As the French capital, Paris draws all kinds of people, from around France and from abroad, and amongst those people are plenty of creatives, students and entrepreneurial spirits that don’t always fit in the 9 to 5 category. This city is an iconic epicenter of art and culture, after all. While a more traditional work culture has been the dominant one, slowly but surely startup and freelance culture is starting to grow, and with it, the need for temporary workspaces.
Enter Cafe Craft, a cafe that calls itself the “premier café dédié aux créatifs indépendants.” If your French is rusty: “the first cafe devoted to independent creatives.” And that’s exactly what you get. Desk space, fast and free wifi (often an anomaly in this city) and most important, a plethora of outlets to charge your computer. You can literally sit here all day, and as long as you’re willing to pay for it, no one is going to hassle you or give you a nasty Parisian glare.
Read the full article on Sprudge
Is There Anything Better Than Bikes and Sunshine?
Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.
– John F. Kennedy
Life is simple really. Take a moment to slow down. Appreciate the present. Celebrate in the small things.
Standing on Pont des Arts I captured this shot, a woman cycling in the afternoon sun. Maybe she was on her way to meet a friend, maybe she was on her way home, or maybe she was just outside taking in the summer day. Whatever she was doing, it was beautiful.
Love bikes? You’ll love The Culinary Cyclist, a cookbook for anyone that believes that life is better spent on two wheels.
blog.annabrones.com 