Signs and Wonders

Every now and then I have to travel from my home in Dublin up to meetings in Belfast. It's only a couple of hours drive, but - depending on who you talk to - you do get to cross and international border. I'm happy to make the journey with other people, but if I'm honest I quite relish the time alone in the car for a few hours. I usually take along a couple of podcasts to listen to: often some theological seminar balanced by Car Talk for the way home.

Today as I was approaching Lisburn (I think) just outside of Belfast I happened to see a small sign at the side of the road that advertised a near by "coffeehouse". That phrase caught my attention because it isn't often used this side of the Atlantic and I began to wonder what delights were to be found. I drove on and thought to myself, 'I should stop there sometime and check it out.'

You may or may not be surprised at how often I think to myself, 'Oh I must.....sometime.' Perhaps you encounter similar wistful moments. It wasn't until a minute later that I thought about how I was making good time that morning and maybe I should turn around and find the coffeehouse that was luring me. If not now, when?

On managing to turn the car around and find the sign again I turned down a small country road, eventually pulling into a car park of what looked like a block of warehouses. The "coffeehouse" was actually a large restaurant, but it looked pleasant enough so I went in, ordered a latte, declined a scone and sat in a sofa by the window. There was no one else around so it wasn't long before my coffee was brought to me.

Wow.

I haven't seen coffee presented like this in a loooong time. The drink was in a tall glass mug which was not too unusual. It did however allow a view into the overwhelming proportions of coffee and froth. It was an even 50/50 split in the mug with another third again of froth on top, sitting like a delicate white meringue peak still soft from the oven. I sensed that the girl who brought me the drink was quite pleased with her creation and I wondered for a moment what training she was given. Is this something you learn in a book or watch a video? Or perhaps it was a skill passed on from the older proprietor of the restaurant because 'that's the way our customers like it.'

Unfortunately I didn't. This wasn't helped by being able to see coffee grounds sitting at the bottom of the mug. All of which goes to prove that spontaneity and going down the road less travelled isn't always all it's cracked up to be!

Accents Coffee & Tea Lounge

I knew the first time that I entered Accents Coffee & Tea Lounge that if anything was going to awaken me from my blogging slumber then this was going to be the place that did it! (The fact that it has taken half a dozen visits before I write should, perhaps, be left unsaid.)

I came across a flyer advertising the cafe in a local community centre while attending for my daughter's end of year Feis. That community centre is about 4 or 5km from the cafe which just goes to prove that the further you throw your net the more likely you are of catching something. But why would I want to go to a cafe which is a bit of a distance from where I live?

The answer to that question was on the hand-held advertisement: It wasn't the 50% off voucher. It wasn't the 'Cadbury's purple' colour scheme of the design. It was simply the inviting words: "Open until 11pm."

Finally! A cafe in Dublin that stays open past 7/8pm. My local coffeehouse used to stay open 'till the wee small hours......but not anymore. I had to get down to Accents to check it out.

I did and it's great. An almost perfect coffeehouse. The kind of place that, were I to run my own cafe, it would be very much like this. For me it takes the Starbucks model of a 'third space', a home-from-home environment, and says we can do better. And they do.

The cafe is spread across two floors: the ground floor with serving area, a few tables and sofas and a nook which is home to a well stocked bookcase. Then there is the basement which is not the dingy sort of affair that you often find in coffeehouse basements, but is very comfortably furnished with sofas, chairs, huge beanbags, handmade tables, portrait photos on the wall (I think I spot the owner??), and lighting which is subtle but still bright enough to read a book from the further selection available.

Added to this are coffees in their usual shades, a wide variety of teas, chai (which I'm happy to admit I have no idea what it really is, let alone tasted), plus a fantastic hot chocolate that you would go out of your way for on a cold winter day....and quite probably a cold Irish summer night.

To top it off they a completely family friendly. In fact they positively encourage families to visit!

There's more I want to say about Accents Coffee & Tea Lounge, but I'll save it for another post. Suffice to say, well done for creating a wonderful and much sought after space.

An Unfinished Project

My guess is that blogs can be broken into three categories. Those that write prolifically about anything and everything, those that write half-a-dozen posts before giving up entirely, and then there's the rest of us. By that I mean those who stop-start-stop-apologize for not blogging in a while-start again and write profusely-stop-apologize again-start-then disappear for an undetermined period of time. I place myself firmly in this last category.

And yet I've never felt like I was done with blogging even though the general popularity of it has seemed to fade somewhat. (Please be assured that I am most certainly not done with coffee!) Unfortunately I allowed Views from a Coffeehouse to become another in a fairly extensive list of unfinished projects - along side sorting out photos, putting pictures up, getting in shape, editing home videos, memorizing poetry, cleaning out the den, and goodness knows how many books.

So here I am again almost five years to the day when I first started and I'm going to give it another go. I still want to tell you about the things I'm seeing/hearing/reading over coffee. I might do some coffee videos. I'd like to write up my personal history of coffee. Plus I never did actually fully write about when I visited every Starbucks in Ireland - though I'm not sure there's much point. Once you've been to one Starbucks.....

Speaking of the 'bucks, I have noticed that the stats which now are available for me show my post about McCafe vs Starbucks as the most visited page. If you google "mccafe vs starbucks" I come out as number 2 in the USA and UK and number 1 in Ireland! I'm just a little bit proud of that insignificant achievement.



Right, I've just used my new hand grinder (thanks mother-in-law) and brewed some beans from Machacamarca, Bolivia using my aeropress. Time to find out how to freshen up this whole blog a bit and get going again.

To Coffee!