One of my “must-do” activities when travelling is to seek out any and all specialty coffee shops around where I’m staying, and spend a good chunk of time in them.
Reasons being:
Foremost, I’m all about that third-wave, hipster, “lemme nerd out on this for a while” kinda coffee.
Fuck your burnt Starbucks swill.
Feeding off the first reason, the amount of love the baristas (often the owners) puts into their drinks is delightful, and makes for a) delicious coffee and b) a caffeination experience akin to sipping freshly brewed coffee while sitting on a pillow of clouds atop mountains in Guatemala.
And…if you hang around long enough, you usually end up getting to talk with the barista/owner, and find out more about the locale than you would blindly wandering around.
Yesterday’s cafe in particular was right up my alley, and a pleasant surprise tucked away in the old, winding streets of Valencia.
Behold, the Beat Brew Bar: