Living in China can be tough for a coffee lover. Our best option as far as price and size goes is, sadly, Starbucks. Most coffee shops in China make watered down, tiny cups of something that resembles coffee but doesn’t quite hit the mark.
Luckin Coffee was suppose to revolutionize coffee in China… But their prices are higher than Starbucks and their coffee is weak. They also ONLY do delivery, so you don’t have the option of bringing your own reusable mug, which I dislike greatly.
In Europe, however, we’ve been spoiled for choice. We’ve had to change the way we drink coffee, of course. In Canada, I’d order myself a 20oz Large Double Double at McDonald’s twice a day. If they had a bigger size, I would probably order it!
Can you make that a double double?
In Europe, they don’t do drip coffee. They mostly do espresso, cappuccinos and cafe con leche. And their cups are small. But delicious.
I didn’t take pictures of EVERY cup of coffee I’ve had, but I did take one of my first cup in Madrid. T’was excellent
Price is also a factor in China. Starbucks is double the price in China as it is in Canada, but it’s STILL better value than any of the local chains! You can get a Venti (20oz) drip coffee for $5 Canadian at Starbucks, but anywhere else, you pay $7 for 12oz. It’s crazy.
To get my favourite specialty drink at Starbucks, I pay more than $8 Canadian!
In Europe, we’ve been enjoying our €1.50 coffees a couple of times a day and we’ve been loving it. Today we found a coffee shop in Warsaw that specialized in coffee from all around the world. For about $3.50, I enjoyed a perfect cup of Guatamalan coffee in a cozy atmosphere.
Seen here: Cozy atmosphere
I’m done rambling about coffee now.
Correction: FOR now….
For those of you who don’t know why we’re in Poland, my favourite band, Blue October, is playing here in Warsaw tomorrow night!!!! We added Poland to our spring festival itinerary, just so I could meet the band and see them perform live!
I’m guessing tomorrow’s post might be about that….
Not every day can be exciting. It took two weeks, the forces of nature and shopping bylaws to slow us down, but we finally did. We finally took a chill day on our holiday.
It took me 3 weeks last year! Stupid wind is slowing me down in 2019!!
The drive from Montpellier to Barcelona is pretty long so we decided to split it up with a stopover in the small French town of Perpignan. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize that everything is closed on Sundays in this sleepy French town, so we got there and had nothing to do!!
Even finding an open restaurant was difficult!Even in touristy areas, no one was outside.As we drove through, it felt a bit like a science fiction movie. I kept expecting zombies to appear!
Ok, it wasn’t that bad… But the wind WAS crazy yesterday, and with most businesses closed for Sunday, everyone was staying inside. So, we spent the day napping and catching up on the news as well. It was probably a good idea. We’ve been running on all cylinders since we arrived in Europe.
Day 14 stepsDay 15 Steps
We did drive around a bit in the evening to find some food. We ended up settling for some fast food (a truely lazy day!), and on our drive we saw the effects of the crazy strong winds that ripped through the region all day.
We saw lots of branches laying across the roadPlenty of garbage bins and patio furniture also got tossed around in the windIt was like a prairie storm without the rain!
So that’s all I really have to say about day 14. Day 15 was much more exciting, so stay tuned for my post tomorrow!!
Air BNB has been a valuable tool for us this trip. France and Spain are a lot more expensive than Indonesia or Vietnam, which has meant that this holiday has cost quite a bit more. By using Air BNB, we’ve saved a lot.
Air BNB hosts often offer great insight into ways to save money and know all the best local hotspots as well. Our first host, in Madrid, recommended one of the best tapas bars we visited. It was a great introduction to Spain!
Our host in Toulouse was also a lifesaver and money saver. When we had some car trouble, it was our Air BNB host I contacted. If it hadn’t been for Anna’s advice, we likely would have paid double for the repairs needed.
Small mechanics like St. Simon Automobile don’t come up on the first few pages of Google
Air BNB also offers many different lodging options. You can book a room in someone’s home, or book an entire apartment. Sometimes you will have flatmates, and sometimes you’ll have total and complete privacy. I always try to find options that give us a private bathroom. I can handle sharing an apartment with another guest, but I prefer to have my own shower.
Sometimes you get lucky and get a room with a view!
You can also book activities through Air BNB. Our second night in Spain was spent on a Tapas Crawl I learned about while looking for accommodations in Madrid. A couple of locals host a culinary tour. They’re self proclaimed foodies (like me!), so they knew all the best spots!
Pork belly and cheese! Talk about a good start to the night!
I booked with them through Air bnb and we spent the evening going from bar to bar, trying some of Madrid’s best snacks and drinks. It was one of the best things we’ve done on this trip so far!
Our group at the Tapas Crawl. It was such a well planned tour!!
Of course, things don’t always turn out as planned. We’ve had a bit of bad luck on the site as well, both with rooms and with activities.
When you see a half eaten pig’s leg on the street on your way into your Air BNB … It might be a bad sign….
Some problems aren’t a big deal. In Toledo we had a very complicated check in and terrible lighting in our room. It was all especially irritating because the price was so much higher in Toledo than it had been in Segovia or Avila.
Toledo: Overcrowded, Overpriced
Our worst experience to date has been in Montpellier. Our host is actually out of town, so she has a friend cleaning up for her between guests. This friend didn’t do the best job, and when you add that to the black mould on our walls, and the fact that she forgot to leave us toilet paper or clean towels, we’ve been pretty annoyed.
Dirty fridgeMould is never fun
Worse yet was our problem with the bed. At one point last night, I rolled over and we heard something crack and fall. I moved a bit again and something else sounded like it was cracked too. We turned on the lights to investigate and discovered that this is an ongoing issue with the cheaply made bed frame. We’ll be dealing with the planks falling again tonight…
Paper towel has been stuffed into the ends, to try to keep the planks from falling out, but it doesn’t seem to help….
We haven’t had much luck in Montpellier with Air BNB actually. We also tried to book a vineyard tour, but the pick up location on the host’s page wasn’t correct, and he never told us. We arrived on time… He was somewhere else and left without us.
We went to an aquarium instead and did a bit of sight seeing. There’ll be more on that in my next post….
So, Air BNB, like everything else, can be flawed. Good hosts are helpful, friendly, welcoming and valuable resources. Bad hosts can have you driving around Montpellier at 10:30, looking for bath towels and toilet paper.
Thank goodness for Geant Casino! Luckily enough … They happened to be trying out a 24 hour format for 3 days when we happened to need towels at 10:30 at night!
For my Day 13 Post, I’ll be writing about our experience with the massive protests happening across France right now! Stay tuned!
There are risks associated with renting a car. Even if you’re the best driver on the planet, you can’t always guarantee everyone else will be.
These tiny streets begin and end out of no where. Last night, we saw a cyclist nearly get hit by a big van that came barreling around the corner. She had to jump off her bike to avoid a collision.
Car accidents aren’t the only thing you need to worry about either. We’ve seen vandelism (particularly graffiti) all over Spain and France. Some of the graffiti is nice, I’ll admit, but a lot of it is amateur. Even in Sagrada Familia we saw that people had carved their names in the stairwell coming down from the tower. It’s a real problem.
This picture is stolen from the internet because I hadn’t thought to take any photos of this until now. It’s what many of the bridges in Madrid and Barcelona look like
Even vandalism isn’t the end of rental risks, unfortunately. Sometimes the renters can get confused by language differences, and their french-speaking wives don’t catch their mistakes in time.
Which one would you think is Gasoline?
That’s how we ended up with a tank full of diesel, and a vehicle that wouldn’t run properly. Luckily it was a simple fix (just had to drain the vehicle of the diesel), but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t stressed out.
If you’re paying close attention you will notice that Gazole is labeled as Diesel, but if you’re filling up at 10pm in a strange city at a 24 hour self-serve gas station, you might have the same problem we did.
In Dave’s defence, Gazole is a brand of DIESEL in Europe, which is very confusing for someone who doesn’t speak French, but knows that there it shares a lot of similarities with English.
Dave filling our tank with GAS this morning
So, if you find yourself in Toulouse, with a rental car, I’m here to warn you that you that the french word for gasoline is NOT Gazole. And … If you are unfortunate enough to end up with a tank full of diesel, contact St. Simon Automobile. They are not only crazy nice, but they didn’t rip us off and even went so far as to keep our costs as low as possible.
The man who runs St. Simon speaks good English too! And he was patient with my attempts with my very rusty French!He even had an employee help tow our car so that we didn’t have to fork over extra money for a tow truck. I wanted to hug him. Such a nice guy!!!He only charged us 70€ for something we were sure was going to cost 200-300€
It’s funny how things can turn out. We honestly had a bit of a crummy time in Toulouse. We found most people to be pretty rude and we ended up settling for dinner at McDonald’s because even at 7pm, no one was serving dinner yet.
Dave got the blue cheese burger. It cost 12€, and he wishes he’d ordered the 6€ Big Mac
Yet, our crappy car circumstances somehow changed our entire perspective on the city. Without the recommendation of this mechanic from our air BNB host, and without the kindness of this man, we would have left Toulouse with a sour taste. Sometimes difficult situations can really turn things around for the best, apparently!!
Our moods were lifted and we continued onto Montpellier today!
You can reach St. Simon here:
Saint Simon Automobile 8 Rue Antoine Bayes, 31100 Toulouse, France
