The best (in my few travels to Russia, Israel, England, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, most of Africa (including Kenya where the world's best coffee is grown), the USA and Canada, the complete best package is in the little city of Vernon, British Columbia, Canada.

Small and intimate, lots of un-shiny old wood, the old tables and farm chairs - some not too sturdy anymore, begging to tell their story; the aroma of the best AA class national blends from Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Ethiopia hanging thickly under the high ceiling - barely allowing the faint muskiness of cinnamon and aniseed to be noticeable.

And then this past Saturday while stepping about in Cheyenne I happened on just The Cutest Little Coffee House in Wyoming (my suggested name to the three cute owners).

The small lobby of an old, small hotel - not of Frontier Days vintage but from a time when perfectly cut and shaped and fitted wood panelling was a sign of quality and finesse - had been rearranged into a really intimate little coffee-moment parlour.

The ambience is perfect, the music (once you notice it) is pleasantly soft and well chosen, the no-frills, not overstated selection is well presented - and the choice of the day was perfectly pleasing.

No doubt in my experience this is number two on my list - and only so because that necessary ingredient to the coffee moment, the biscuit or scone or muffin (why-ever would the Brits have coined this term for this piece of cake?) were not immediately visibly displayed. One had to ask what was available. I bet next time I may be in Cheyenne the three young ladies who run this little jewel will have by themselves elevated themselves right to the top.

See a photo or two.

 

Nicer tea/coffee house MM. The girls aren't bad either ............. .......... I don't eat cakes usually but I love blueberry muffins ................... they generally only sell rubbish choc chip muffins here ..................... but I've found a coffee house in Royan run by an Indian/Asian lady ................... she sells blueberry muffins ............. .............. and it's right near my excellent dentist .........

 

Kremling, Colorado. A small warm coffee shop outfitted with small intimate square tables in the city of utter sin. I remember sitting at a table looking out the window at a tour bus coming into town. A gentleman stepped off of the bus, grabbed a cup of coffee from the local competitor and then actually sniffed it. Unbeknownst to him I was analyzing his every move as I supped my tea... yes, tea. It was hot, scalding...and I had to sup it very slowly.... A generous slice of chocolate cake was served to me with two forks but alas I had no one to share it with as the gentleman got back onto the bus as quickly as he came and that was the last I saw of him...


Ahh.. what a symphony of symptoms we could have discussed regarding Land Rovers and life if only he had chosen a different direction.


R.

 

If this happened in May 2012 that may very well have been me on the Greyhound between Denver and Craig... I invariably will sniff at coffee if the aroma is not evident in the air. By the way, the coffee I got from the roadside server at the Kremling bus stop at the time was undrinkably bad...

Landrovers at the time would have been quite divorced from my mind. I had by then already forgotten the illogically poor quality of ten years' earlier black smoking Tdi 200 engines and R280 gearboxes that would last for 1,000 miles in the hot, deep sands of Southern Africa, and the new, factory supplied already corroded and worn-out steering boxes and A-frame ball joints, and steel rims unmovably corroded onto the rotors making it impossible to change a flat tire, and manual window cranks falling off their grooved shafts...

I would much rather have discussed over coffee the possiblilty of a hike up to Rabbit Ears, which I did in fact do two years later.

 

In talking coffee shops, I reckon for all round good coffee, watching the world go by and people watching it has to be one day in Barcelona back in the mid 1990's. Sitting outside a pavement cafe just off the Diagonal watching and listening to people and observing their lives. The icing on the cake for me was I've never seen so many beautiful women anywhere in the world both in that coffee shop and walking by going about their business. That street cafe on that day at that moment just crytallised everyday life in an urban environment where most seemed happily enjoying life whatever they were doing. Pure magic and something one experiences very rarely.

 

Indeed Monsieur, and this memory as well as Ms. Landlover's tale of Kremmling, Colorado returned my thoughts to a morning I spent in the Kremlin (walled city) of Nizhny Novgorod in Russia, in April 1994.

I still see her with her dark tan leather coat, dark tan high boots, noble poise - even in the way she held her sheathed umbrella when first approaching. Moskva has thousands and thousands of beautiful women and maybe a thousand or two who may not have the nerve to enter a contest, but Nizhny Novorod does not have the latter thousand - mayby 13 or so individuals - and of them I only saw three.

The coffee aroma from the Italian style Bistro was what had drawn me - the spring sunshine was just beginning to melt the snow and the coffee houses were filling up with beautiful, smiling people - taking notice of the tanned face I brought from a summer behind me in South Africa, and smiling their expectations of a summer to come. And the music - Piotr Thaikovski's 5th Piano Concerto from an open air orchestra in the gardens accross the street was clear in the quietness amongst those old walls.