Transforming Decaf

I blame the palm civets for my current coffee problems. Remember those adorable Indonesian berry-munchers? They choose only the best coffee cherries, snarf them down, and then leave the beans behind in fragrant piles for the weird hairless apes to collect and export. I first tried Kopi Luwak, the “best and/or most expensive coffee in…

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Five Things I Won’t Miss About France (And Five Things I Will)

Won’t Miss: Cigarettes and Perfume Having imported the former from the Americas, and having claimed supremacy over the latter, the French smoke cigarettes and wear perfume like they’re both going out of style – which they absolutely are. I am not particularly scent-sensitive, but I’ve still had many a promenade disrupted by walking unawares into…

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Transforming Cannonboobs

We’re sitting in a terrace outside Moulin D’Or, a restaurant in the Place du Théâtre, one of Lille’s many town squares. Actually we’re in the second-class terrace – the covered tables are for customers ordering food, mostly mussels or meat pies; mere coffee drinkers like ourselves sit on the outside of the fenced-in patio, closer…

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