Did you know that Scandinavian’s are the most enthusiastic coffee drinkers in the world? They drink an average of 9 cups per day!
Tallin, Estonia – a visually stunning medieval town with the coolest cafes and too many pastries! The header picture above was also taken in Tallin, in the town square.
This cafe and chocolate shop was down a little corridor… Rob and I had breakfast there once, flaky pastries with sun-dried tomatoes and chocolate pastry, naturally! It was so good we went back for dessert with Salwa and Barry. While we were sitting there I thought that this might be a good place to start taking pictures of coffee for that website I was telling you about. But how to be discreet….. First, start taking pictures of your sweetie and friends, then casually try to catch the cool couple in the back…..
After a couple of tries, and numerous pictures of our actual coffee, I told Salwa what I was really trying to do – take pictures of people drinking coffee without them noticing because I had ‘qualms’ about doing it. Salwa explained that she ‘had no qualms’ (is that even a word!) and proceeded to take some pictures for me. She has a honking big camera too, so there is no missing her! Here are a couple of her pictures.
Oh, in case you were wondering…..
My coffee was very good (but the best is right here at home!) It’s regular coffee, but they put it through an espresso machine to froth it up – dessert was pretty good too!
Coffee isn’t the only drink in town! Saku beer is very popular as well. As you can see by the people behind Barry and Rob, this is a nice restaurant – and they did look us over because of our casual dress, but let us in anyway. We took pictures of the bathroom while we were there – seriously, look!
The floor was see-thru with a view of rock steps below. The ceiling was some kind one-way looking plexiglass or something. I kept thinking (besides weird) that my Mom couldn’t “go” in here. From outside the bathroom you can see that the ceiling is separate and about a foot lower than the real ceiling, which is solid wood – phew! What a relief! Now back to coffee…
Barry and Salwa had found this really neat coffee house that served awesome chocolate cake, tucked into the basement of an old building. They wanted to “show it to us” (they wanted more cake!) so, grudgingly, we went. This is the front of the coffee shop:
What a cool coffee shop! It even had an adjoining “cave” that led out to a patio. They were out of the cake, so Barry and Salwa treated Rob and I to coffee and chocolates – delicious!
That’s me in the pink. Is that a question mark by my head? I wonder what I’m thinking???
My coffee, and below, Salwa’s chocolate cake:
Looks good, eh?!
Helsinki, Finland was my favourite place to visit. The harbour area was very scenic and had a great park with works of art and cafes with outside seating to people watch from. We chose to sit inside for breakfast. I ordered coffee and pastries, Rob had orange juice and reindeer quiche. He liked it, said it was a bit chewy.
After walking around the harbour and a small island, I felt like, guess what? Coffee and dessert! As they say, “when in Rome….”
Hey, Rob – after you take my picture, let’s stop for coffee.
I can’t remember the name of this dessert… it’s an Italian name… it was very good!
Rob only had a small cup of ice cream.
We didn’t just eat dessert! Across from our hotel was a Turkish pizza shop. Almost everything in Helsinki was closed for the first holiday weekend of the summer, but it was open. I thought the pizza shop was beautiful and the pizza was good too. We ate there a couple of times. Nice lights!
The man making our pizza was funny. We ordered a pepperoni pizza. He said, “I have a Mexican pizza ready if you want it, it would be faster.”
We said, “Sure”
Then he asked, “Do you want garlic on it?”
We said, “Yes”
Then he asked, “Is this enough hot pepper?”
We said, “Yes”
Then he asked, “Do you want oregano on it?”
Again, we said, “Yes”
Then he asked, “Do you want the top broiled?”
We said, “Sure”
He brought the pizza out and asked, “Is it broiled enough?”
It was. We said, “Yes, that’s great”
Then he asked, “Would we like him to cut it?”
We said, “Yes, please”
He asked, ”Do you want me to cut it into two pieces or four pieces?”
We said, “Four, please”
Then he cut it into eight pieces and said, “I cut it into eight pieces, that way you (Rob) can eat five and she can eat three!”
We laughed. We are not sure why he said he had it ready, this was the most custom pizza we’ve ever eaten and it took awhile to prepare too, definitely not faster! We wolfed it down in our room. He also told me to take a cup of coffee with me, so I did. Thank goodness I had to pour it myself! The pizza was good, the coffee? meh…
We went back for dinner with Salwa and Barry. Good pizza. Different guy.
Panacotta, that was the name of that dessert! But I never did get my chocolate cake…. mmmmm, chocolate cake!
I had chocolate cake at Robert’s while Rob was looking for a razor.
Robert’s is a chain of coffee shops and is a lot like Starbuck’s Coffee – which we didn’t see any of. In fact, the only franchise we could see was McDonald’s.
This was the view from where I was sitting at Robert’s:
Barry and Salwa had mentioned that they found this place that serves awesome cheesecake. We decided to check it out. Ofcourse we walked, which is the only reason we didn’t gain a ton of weight! We walked everywhere, constantly. That was why I loved Helsinki – you could walk the town, parks, islands – loved it! So we headed out, stopped for an ice cream cone along the way. Passed many cafes, but held out for the one at the top of the hill, where they served the cheesecake.
These people really like their coffee.
There it is, but they were out of the cheesecake! We ate well, but I didn’t take any pictures of the food!
While we were gone, my friend, Tracy, was taking care of our dog. I wanted to bring her back a gift, but everything was closed. We were looking in windows and saw these coffee cups. I thought, “just what she needs!” Kidding – she has her own organic coffee business, Kyoto Coffee. The shops were scheduled to open 1 hour before I had to leave to catch a bus to the airport to go home. Here is a picture through the window of the cups. She has a coffee bean mouth and eyes!
The girl wrapping the gift was the perfect Finnish “blue-eyed, blonde” so I asked if I could take her picture.
I took several pictures of cafes and coffee signs along the way, but they were mostly closed so I won’t post them here. I’ll leave this page with a picture of Rob and I eating – what else – pastry!
