It's a very pretty, medieval town, full of winding stone streets, wrought-iron clad balconies and olive tree lined boulevards. The street pictured below is the one typically used on tourist brochures - and it is very, very quaint. The street winds up the hill at such an angle that steps are built into the centre, darker stone part.
And here is one of the many olive trees dotting the town.
And each of them is loaded with olives.
Most of our days will find us at one of the numerous cafes around town, enjoying a coffee. Brad has a simple 'cafe' - essentially an espresso. Cassie opts for a noisette (same small espresso with a touch of cream) or a creme cafe (a giant splash of cream with the coffee). Sometimes you get a little thin biscuit with it, depending on which cafe you're at.
Typical Monday....
We're slowly getting the hang of 'having coffee' here. If the cafe serves food and you only want coffee, you don't sit at a table set with placemats and cutlery. Cafes usually have some set and some not. You don't need to wait to be seated, just sit down and someone will appear to take your order. When the drinks arrive, so does the bill - which you can choose to pay immediately. After that, you're free to sit there as long as you want.
Typical Tuesday.....with Clayton visiting...
Typical Thursday...
Heyyyyy, wait a minute!
Ok cheating here. We dropped Clayton off in Marseille for his flight out of France, and we stopped in the city for a bit o' home. Starbucks has not infiltrated into France yet, really. There are a load of them in Paris, but outside of the City of Lights, the way the French have coffee and the way Starbucks needs to do business are very different.
The French like to sit and drink their coffee and relax for a while. But Starbucks needs a good percentage of their clients to take that Grande Latte and leave with it. We've read that the profit margins for French Starbucks are low (or non-existent) due to the required rental of large stores with adequate seating (and the established, traditional cafe culture in the country). Should be interesting to see what the green mermaid can pull off.
We did enjoy our stop at the downtown Marseille store...with the next closest one about 300kms away.
No comments:
Post a Comment