In the soap shop of whimsy

The café in the soap shop

The rain was lashing the streets with violence (thank you for nothing, wind!). If you opened the umbrella, it was blown away and turned around. If you didn’t, you got all wet. It was all futile: whatever you did, you lost the battle.

It was putting me in a foul mood, so I thought maybe I should take my mind off the nasty weather by going to the shops.

I crossed this shop’s threshold —for there is no actual physical door in it, only an invisible wall of hot air separating the in from the out— and tried to gather all my layers in preparation of what was to come next: toiletry shopping.

My deliberate efforts to minimise the negative impact I leave on Earth had led me to conclude it would be a good idea to switch to soap rather than use shower gel, and what could be better than getting soap at a place where not only can you buy it by the weight, but is also made in an ethical manner?

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Restaurants, cafés and places to drink in Valencia

Valencia's train station with the sun emerging behind clouds

We love eating out in Valencia, and now we’d like to share some of our favourite places with you all!

There is a tough balance between sharing your secrets and then risking a place becoming so popular that you cannot get into it any more, but frankly, right now the hospitality industry needs people to support it.

One other caveat is that we tend to eat out in Russafa, so lots of our recommendations are around there. As we visit more places, we’ll add them to the list.

So please do go and enjoy!

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Kick in the pants

The scale for coffee beans at Monmouth Coffee Company

A kick in the pants is a coffee-based drink, consisting in one shot of espresso added to a cup of drip coffee.

You get the aroma and almost all the purity and cleanliness of the drip coffee, and the espresso adds some extra body (and caffeine). It’s something in between the two; worth trying out!

Since the only thing that can fight indulgent stupors is a cup of strong espresso coffee, and there’s been a bunch of said stupors during these festive days, I’ve been making good use of our Bialetti coffee maker.

If we don’t drink all the espresso in a batch, I store it in a jar and use it the next day to make a couple of “kick in the pants”.

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