Café Olé

If you can read this we are still alive. But we have given up on McDonalds coffee. Their free WIFI wouldn’t work with our notebook computer. When we tried to log on there was a strong local signal, but we were asked for a password. None of the kids behind the counter knew a password, saying that it was just automatic log on. In Paris, and joyful reconnection, I searched on some chat-lines, and found that the request for a password can occasionally happen, and the solution is “to ask one of the kids behind the counter”.
Oh well, it was no great tragedy. Their coffee was awful anyway. In Australia all the larger McDonalds have a McCafe, where one really can get a half-decent expresso-made latte and muffin. These don’t seem to exist in France. All their coffee comes out of a black box, where dozens of mystery chemical compounds seem to mix, and dribble into a paper cup. After millennia of work one would have hoped that Alchemists could come up with something better than this.
The search for a decent coffee has been long and painful. The French cappuccini just don’t seem to work. Ted has been mightily disappointed. Trying to explore further territory Judith asked for a café Chantilly. It was just black coffee with an anti-iceberg of a white material that came out of a spray can drifting sullenly across the surface, with about one seventh below the waterline.
Café au lait can be probably be deleted from all the French textbooks that school students use. Very few French people seem to drink it. Most people seem to drink expresso coffee is tiny cups. We would commonly call them short blacks in Australia. They really are the best way to go. In most local bars they cost 1.00 – 1.20 Euro ($1.70 - $2.00) each, in tourist towns 2.00 Euro, and super-tourist towns 3.00 Euro. In some cases it is cheaper to buy a glass of wine than a coffee.
It is still daylight saving in France. It is really super daylight saving, as sunrise is about 08:30 AM, and sunset about 07:30 PM. On my Friday walks I have been leaving at 07:00 AM in the dark. Passing through some smaller villages the only places open have been the boulangerie, where there is a steady stream of locals picking up their bagettes for the day, and the bar-tabac, where there are always a few small huddles of Frenchmen, and occasionally a woman, quietly chatting and having an expresso to start the day. These bar-tabacs, with their wonderful smells of expresso coffee, low murmur of conversation, a promise of warmth, and colourful lights spilling out onto the footpaths are real oases in the cold dark mornings, and the only way I could get past without yielding to temptation was by crossing the road and giving them a wide berth.
Chris