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Gia-Gina Across the Pond

So I've decided to follow my husband to his native Italy. Follow our adventures as we eat, drink, travel, adapt to and explore this remarkable country. Part food blog, part photo blog but mostly my rants and raves. After our two years in Italy, we relocated across the Atlantic "pond" and are back in the States.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

The Coffee Un-Connoisseur

I have never been a coffee drinker. Mostly because I have a small enough bladder as it is and because caffeine makes me fly higher and winds me tighter than my genes have already dictated.

Here in Italy I commit coffee sins everyday. I drink cappuccinos after breakfast, (they think all that milk on a full stomach is not a good idea), I don’t drink coffee after meals and I sometimes as for decaf. Coffees here are not drunk, but taken (the right Italian verb=prendere=to take) at all hours of the day/night and usually standing up in a bar. People walk into bars, order a coffee, drink it like a shot of alcohol, pay and leave in a matter of minutes. Sometimes people meet to chat, have a piece of cake or pastry and sit at tables but this is not the norm. The only time I drink whole milk is with my coffee because there are no other options. When I lived in Seattle, I used to drink mint mochas, Mmm….. chocolaty coffee with a shot of mint. After a while my girlfriends, one in particular, started asking me if I was drinking coffee or candy. With my first trip to Italy approaching, I figured I better wean myself off the candy.

At home on the weekends, I like to have a cappuccino with breakfast or lunch. When I first met Deme, he made me coffees and poured them into my portable coffee mugs so I could sip them slowly as I waited in traffic on my way to work. When I tell the baristas here that Seattleites port around 24, 36 even 42 ounces of coffee, they are shocked! I’ve been here for 5 months and have never seen a “to go” coffee cup. They however will bring espressos, macchiatos and cappuccinos, to your office on nice trays if you happen to have a business close enough to the bar. I don’t take coffees in bars often; I end up having freshly squeezed orange juice and save my tiny coffee appetite for the weekends, when I get them handmade by my #1 barista.

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