Hello Wanderers and Dreamers...
Today I want to share something about myself, another passion that I have:
Coffee...and Cats.
Since I was a little child I was following around cats on the road to school... and today I have two kitties that are both 15 years old now.
So if you are like me, love to travel to beautiful and inspiring places...maybe you will recognize yourself while reading...
From my 15+ years of traveling experiences, something that I have done almost always, even in the early days... is to search for the best, cutest, most cosy coffee shops. I have always felt that these are places where you can feel the "vibe" of the community or country and also relax after a long day of hiking or wandering...
I feel it is also a place I am naturally looking for because it gives me a feel of wellness, well-being, almost like at home. And sometimes I have been very lucky in my opinion to find places where cats were wandering too.
I have visited some very charming coffee shops along the California coast, New York City (Frisson Espresso), London, Vancouver Island, Iceland, Stockholm, Finland, Roma, Paris, Barcelona... and all of them I have a beautiful memory of it. It has always been places where I could sit and experience like the life of someone who would live there.
I would like to share with you a few places I visited that maybe if you are in that city or while traveling you could experiment too. Not to mention that all these coffee shops have reputation of serving great coffee. (See end of the article)
Maybe you are also wondering why I am sharing that with you on my Art blog? Because my latest painting serie is exactly about that.
The way it started was completely unplanned. I just started to paint and while preparing a specialty coffee from California farm "Mraz Family Farms", I felt the urge to paint an orange kitty and a coffee cup but also use the coffee on my paintings.
Letting your mind wander and express yourself in the most simple way when you start to paint is really magical in my opinion. Because it can only be authentic, it comes from you, your life, your experiences and just who you are.
I started to feel so great while creating these new pieces because it made me travel in my mind at the same time. I decided to title the serie "Paws Café" because in French "paws" sounds exactly like "pause" which means "taking a break". So it is a cool word play and I just love it. Along the way it sparkled so many ideas in my head.
The first three paintings I created I used a lot of things that I love : French music partitions, because music is connected to cats and coffee to me just like art. I have these three things surrounding me when I paint, I start my day with my coffee ritual, with my kitties who wakes me up very early, sometimes I take avocado toasts when it is the season and definitely put some music on. So I can tell you I am so proud of this serie of paintings so far which are still in progress.
To come back to the list of Coffee shops and cool places, here are some of my favorite places:
Back to Black (Amsterdam) I met a cute orange kitty there!
Wild Food Café (London)
Kaffeine (London)
Gratitude Café (Los Angeles)
Frisson Espresso (New York)
Coutume Café (Paris)
Big Sur Bakery (Lovely place surrounded by nature)
A library: Henry Miller Library, met a cute tabby cat there... (Big Sur, California)
Tofino Botanical Gardens, coffeeshops and library (Vancouver Island) (New owners!)
Verve Coffee Shop (Santa Cruz, CA)
Bird Rock Coffee Roasters (La Jolla, CA)
Maitrea, it is a restaurant but you can have delicious drinks (Prague)
Sowieso Koffiebar (Bréda, The Netherlands)
Balzac's Coffee (St Lawrence Market, Toronto)
I will have to add more to the list because I have been to so many lovely places I wanna share with you.
If you enjoyed reading, leave a comment!
Thank you
Naïma
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