Time for coffee & cake

It's not every year you can say you've had coffee and cake in seven countries, and while that may not be the most exciting claim for our 2008, it was certainly a satisfying one.

In Urbania, Italy.

With Max in Patisserie Valerie, South Kensington, one of James' favourite haunts:
Where they do cake with a capital K!


Tea in the Lake District, in a Swallows & Amazons house.


Of course when it comes to Kake, you can't beat the Germans...

In the Munich Art Gallery. They talk my language; 'LARGE cup of tea'. (But I had another cappuccino.) And we fought over a Kasetorte mit Sauerkirschen. (It was somewhere between 'Wunderbar' and 'zuper'.)

And then, of course, there's the Monmouth Coffee Co, mentioned in an earlier post...
Breakfast in Denmark.
A decent coffee in Paris (remarkably hard to find; but then we had just left Italy).
Can't go wrong in Melbourne. Bev's café Stax, or Cafe 16 near her old work:


And the café at the art-deco (revived) Balwyn cinema, during the Italian Film Festival. A great place to while away an hour or two when you get the clock-change wrong.

But there's nothing to beat home-made scones, at home.

I'm with Marie A here...

James

Another Swallows and Amazons experience

Following on from Bev's post, I was delighted to discover we had, all unsuspecting, been delivered to a scene from the Arthur Ransome book We didn't mean to go to Sea, featuring the Swallows and Amazons.


We didn't bother trying to line up then and now illustration shots, but the picture above from the book shows how much, even today, 71 years later, the scene's still the same.


We never meant to do an Arthur Ransome tour, but it was nice when we did! Thanks go to the Bobs, including the loan of the book to compare illustrations. Next time we'll visit Secret Water.

James