One thing I really miss about not living in the pacific northwest is having a coffee store at every single corner- and I mean at every single corner. There is
one street in Seattle in particular that has 4 coffee shops at a single corner- namely
Starbucks,
Peet's Coffee and Tea,
Seattle's best and
Tully's. As you can imagine, I picked up a pretty bad habit while living there. I noticed first how addicted to caffeine I really was when I got pregnant and I stopped drinking coffee. I ended up with a terrible headache that was solely attributed to lack of caffeine within 24 hours of quitting coffee. My Dutch cousin Ellis, who has visited me many times, has grown just as addicted to Starbucks as any other American- her favorite is the chai tea Latte. When the first Starbucks opened at the airport in Amsterdam, she called me right away to tell me the big news. Since then, another one has opened in Utrecht and now they are opening a concept store downtown Amsterdam, it is located in a former bank building at Rembrandts square (plein) and is simply called "the bank". It features an intricate wood sculptured ceiling, exposed concrete walls and a large family style seating arrangement. I also noticed some cute Dutch touches, like a row of news papers hanging from the wall- the Dutch love reading the paper while sipping on a cup of coffee- and antique Delfts blue tiles. In addition, the concept store also features (my favorite part) an in house bakery. I can't wait to visit, in the meantime, I hope my fellow Dutchies will and report back to me.
