On this the first of the new Year I am going to take the opportunity to share a little of our time in North and South Carolina over the Holiday.
In our neighborhood here in Chicago is a Coffee Shop and roaster Metropolis Coffee not only some of the best coffee in Chicago but that I have ever had. I have known of the Coffee shop since it opened and have liked their coffee but it took a year and a half or so before it dawned on me to also buy their beans. But I have been doing so for awhile now. Friends of ours were talking about going home for the holidays and how awful the coffee was especially after being used to buying and drinking freshly roasted coffee, and so they were going to be bringing coffee from Chicago home to the south. Kate and I ended up doing the same. My mother-in-law does not drink coffee, nor does my mom (she is a Swede that doesn't drink coffee, a rare bread or so I am told), but my Dad loves coffee though he is drinking less these days so I also decided to bring along some Metropolis coffee. So, Chicago coffee made it's way south this Christmas. I have to admit feeling a little strange packing a bag of coffee but if I hadn't we probably would have bought coffee that did not taste as good, and produced by some large corporation, and most definitely not fair trade and probably not organic, and I at least know that some of the beans from Metropolis are fair trade certified and all or organic. Though mostly I simply find it slightly amusing that Kate and I and our friends carried with us from Chicago coffee beans from our favorite coffee shops.
The time share Kate and I stayed in with our family was decorated in a Golf motif (it was Myrtle Beach). My parents and sister cleverly disguised the golf decorations as Christmas decorations (see images bellow.) the most interesting thing about the resort was that it was also inhabited by a couple of very large light gray squirrels with a band of black across their eyes(picture below). My impression of Myrtle Beach is that it is a very larger amusement park with golf courses along the beach. Any natural beauty of the place is overshadowed by large hotels, random amusement parks (like Hard Rock Park and multiple themed mini-golf courses) and multiple inexplicably large discount beach wear shop... oh and of course restaurants most of all of which are chains. There was one corner of Myrtle beach of shops that somehow has survived the amusification of Myrtle Beach that reminded Kate and I of the older beach towns in LA. Not our sort of place I simply don't like the sort of surreal landscape produced by pointless amusements and commercialization, especially in in place that is also supposed to be (or have been) a very natural beautiful place. Though really it is just the combination of amusement and hyper commercialization that I do not wish to be subjected to and is why I avoid Navy Pier here in Chicago.
Well I have recounted already our adventure in Southern Orthodoxy after we returned with my mother-in-law to North Carolina. Other than that we did pretty much there what we had done in Myrtle Beach hung out read ate and rested.
We usually pack coffee as well.
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