A Year in Leaps: 2017

2017 has been my busiest ever year for travel. I spent 84 days outside the UK on 12 foreign trips, some for business but most for pleasure. 30 of these days were spent on a sabbatical in Australia and New Zealand. I visited five new countries and ten countries in total: the Czech Republic (Prague); France (Paris and Cannes); Germany (Cologne); Italy (Padua); Norway (Oslo); Spain (Barcelona); the United States (New York, Boston, Cape Ann and Maine); Singapore; Australia; and New Zealand.

Regular readers will know that as part of my year-in-review series, I like to highlight some of my favourite travel memories of the year by selecting five photos of me leaping in new or unusual places, so without further ado, here is this year's shortlist:

1. The 'business casual' leap. Barcelona, Spain.
As I hadn't been to Barcelona since 2001, I was excited to return for a business trip, although another work trip to the US the same week meant I only spent 24 hours in the city. The conference was at least being held at the W Hotel on the Barceloneta waterfront (alas, I was lodged elsewhere), which meant that in the brief breaks between sessions, I could dash outside to soak up some sunshine, even if I was more formally attired than usual. I didn't have time for a proper exploration of the city's speciality coffee scene, but I did squeeze in a quick visit to Nomad Coffee on the way to the airport.

2. The 'Czech-ing out Prague' leap. Prague, Czech Republic.
Prague had been on the travel to-do lists of both my mum and me for quite some time, so we decided to organise a long weekend in the Czech capital in April as a late celebration of our birthdays. The weather wasn't especially clement but it was quite pleasant on our first day, so we decided to walk up to leafy Letna Park, which has a fantastic view of the city. The chilly, rainy weather did mean I was able to check out many of Prague's excellent coffee shops.

3. The 'Red Sox fan' leap. Gloucester, MA.
Trips to Boston for me are a bit like buses, it seems. I hadn't been for a decade and then went twice in one year, once in frigid February for a conference and then again in the summer for a family vacation on the North Shore. These trips also allowed me to produce a speciality coffee guide for Boston and Cambridge, MA. In the summer, we rented a house a short drive from gorgeous Good Harbor Beach and the weather was so gorgeous that we spent four or five days there, relaxing on the soft sand, boogie boarding in the rough surf and, at low tide, wading out to Salt Island. Having now seen three Red Sox games at Fenway Park, I now consider them to be 'my' baseball team and even bought a cap.

4. The 'iconic bridge' leap. Sydney, Australia.
As my train pulled into Sydney's Circular Quay Station, the heavens opened, forcing me to dash to my hostel in The Rocks. Luckily, by the time I'd checked in and dropped off my luggage, the makings of a spectacular sunset were underway. I hurried down to the harbour to take some pictures of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. I tried to take some selfie leaps but the lack of places to rest my camera and the volume of pedestrian traffic made this difficult. Luckily, a fellow tourist took pity on me and took this photo for me. In a short stay in Sydney, I also managed to visit 16 speciality coffee spots.

5. The 'leap so I don't have to swim in the sea' leap. Cannes, France.
I spent Christmas with my family in Cannes this year, for the first time since 2014. Although the weather was very sunny, it wasn't especially warm and so the family tradition of a swim in the sea was not enforced (my mum, who is toughest of us all, still did it). As the light on Bijou Plage was so lovely, I recruited my talented brother to photograph my leap into the sunshine. I could be jumping into the sea, after all...

Bonus: The highest 'leap'. Queenstown, New Zealand.
OK, so technically my tandem skydive from 15,000 feet in Queenstown, New Zealand, was more of a tumble and plummet than a leap but it was one of my favourite memories of my trip to Australia and New Zealand, and the most exhilarating activity I've ever done, so I felt it merited inclusion. You can read more about my experience with NZone Skydive here and if you promise not to poke fun at the funny faces I pull, you can watch the video here. If you have the opportunity to skydive in Queenstown (or pretty much anywhere in New Zealand), I'd strongly recommend taking it, even if you find the prospect daunting or scary. It took me days to come down from my adrenaline high (and that period included my flights back to the UK).

Although I don't think I'll be lucky enough to take as many overseas trips next year, I already have several short- and long-haul trips in the works, and am hoping to tick off another major bucket-list item in the autumn. If you are looking for ideas to inspire your own travel planning for 2018, you may like to check out my travel guides page, or for more coffee-centric suggestions, I hope you will find my coffee guides page useful.

The Barcelona Caffeine Chronicles: Nomad Coffee

The first few months of 2017 were always going to be a busy travel period for me, with two short European trips and a longer US work trip scheduled, and then two additional brief European work trips materialised, to Cologne at the end of January and then to Barcelona earlier this week for a hectic one-night stay. I hadn't been to Barcelona for a good 15 years and I was long overdue a return visit. Sadly, because I was only in the city for 28 hours and had almost no free time, I didn't get the chance to see much of the city or to enjoy much of its burgeoning specialty coffee scene.

My hotel, the Hilton Diagonal Mar, was very nice but a good 2.5 miles both from the city centre and the conference hotel. I thought I could kill two birds with one stone by getting up very early to do a run down to the Sagrada Familia and pick up some coffee on the way back. Although it was still dark, I did see Gaudi's wonderful cathedral, but as in Cologne, I had to admire it from the outside. Meanwhile the closest specialty coffee places I'd found didn't open until 9 am. Fail!

After the conference finished that afternoon, however, I did manage to go on a quick walk into the city centre in the glorious sunshine on the way to the airport, and stop by one of the specialty coffee shops I had identified, NOMAD Coffee. Like many of the best places, NOMAD is tucked away down a quiet alley ― in this case, in a pleasant warren of streets in the old town, a few blocks east of Plaça Catalunya.

Inside, the cafe is small and with minimalist decor: a monochrome colour scheme with wooden accents and shelves filled with bags of retail beans and assorted coffee kit, old and new. There are several benches along the side of the cafe and a handful of stools at the counter, where each place is marked by a square of sage green marble, which looked very nice with a cup of coffee on top. NOMAD roast their own coffee at another site near to the cafe.

I started with a pourover and the barista recommended one of the two Rwandan coffees on offer, and I opted for the more citrusy Muyongwe (€5), brewed through the Kalita Wave (they also offer Aeropress-brewed coffee and cold brew), which I really enjoyed. If I were travelling less over the next month, I would have bought a bag of the beans to take home.

As the filter coffee had been so good and as I was trying to atone for 24 hours of mediocre coffee, I also ordered a piccolo (€2.50), which was made with their current favourite espresso, a Guatemalan coffee called La Bomba. The coffee tasted great and the latte art was beautiful, enduring all the way to the bottom.

One of the other baristas was having some latte art training while we were there and as my colleague and I were sitting at the bar, I shared stories from my own home latte art learning curve; they were impressed with the picture of my 'budding tulip' flat white, though. All of the staff were really friendly and it was a lovely place to sit and relax with a good cup of coffee (or two).

In case you were wondering about the name, as I did, Nømad was founded by Jordi Mestre, who earned his chops working at Nude Espresso in London before launching his own coffee cart, which moved nomadically among the city's markets. And this is how happy I was to make it out into the sunshine and to a great coffee shop (albeit briefly):

NOMAD Coffee. Passatge Sert 12, 08003 Barcelona. Website. Twitter. Instagram. This location (the coffee lab and shop) is only open on weekdays, as is the roastery at Carrer de Pujades 95, but they also have a cafe at Carrer Joaquín Costa 26, which is also open at weekends.

If you have more time in the city than I did, Perfect Daily Grind has a good list of specialty coffee shops (the intriguingly named Satan's Coffee Corner would have been my next stop) and Right Side Roast also list some of the cafes throughout Spain where you can find their coffee.