If it weren’t for the hoards of tourists, Innsbruck might be the perfect Alpine city. But places that are popular are popular for a reason. And Innsbruck’s stunning natural beauty, quaint architecture, and top-tier winter sports make it a travel destination like few others, even if you probably will find that tour group of American college students to be unreasonably loud.
But Innsbruck is more than just the home of the 1976 Winter Olympics. It’s also a pretty good place to get a cup of coffee. Honestly, any cup of coffee tastes pretty good when you’re staring at the Alps, but two places we had coffee in Innsbruck were a step above….
As someone with a penchant for geography, I was embarrassed by how little I knew about the Slovak Republic when I boarded a bus for Bratislava– Slovakia’s capital and largest city. I knew Slovakia has a burgeoning natural wine seen. I knew about the so-called Velvet Divorce with the Czech Republic. And I had learned from our friends at European Coffee Trip that the city has a thriving specialty coffee scene. Even so, I was surprised and impressed by the depth, diversity, and quality of the café scene in what’s a relatively small city. Sadly, my limited time and caffeine tolerance kept my experience to three cafés, but if you’re looking for more, I’m sure the baristas at these beautiful cafés can point you in the right direction….
Walking down Josefstrasse, it’s easy to see why Zurich repeatedly tops lists of the world’s most livable cities. The brightly colored apartment blocs– an eclectic array of modern and neoclassical architectural styles– are flanked by wide sidewalks with plenty of trees and park benches. Impeccably-dressed cyclists constitute the majority of traffic, and the occasional motorist doesn’t hesitate to yield the right of way to pedestrians.
Istanbul is truly enormous. It’s so big, it’s hard to measure, though some counts list it as the fourth largest city in the world. As the city sprawled out over the the twentieth century, it engulfed several ancient communities, including the modern district of Kadıköy, known as Chalcedon in ancient times. Today, Kadıköy is the main cultural hub for Istanbul’s Asian half, and is home to a dense array of cafés and coffee roasters, including the new headquarters for 
Does the world need another pour-over dripper? If you asked us yesterday, we would have said no. Between the 
Specialty coffee is often compared to wine, although the two beverages might have less in common than many coffee professionals might wish. For one example, the top wines of the world are usually vinified in a cellar located on or near the vineyard where the grapes were grown. Coffee, on the other hand, is usually roasted thousands of miles from the land that produced it. Although practically all specialty coffee drinkers have had coffee from Colombia, Brazil, or Kenya, how many have had coffee from a craft roaster in one of those countries? 
After years of being the favorite scapegoat of baristas everywhere, coffee professionals are recognizing anew that automatic consumer coffee makers are not that bad. In fact, when it comes to the class of SCA-certified brewers, like the 
Almost every major player in the Istanbul coffee scene has a Nişantaşı outpost now, but the upscale neighborhood on the city’s European side continues to welcome new coffee shops into its fold. In the year since I wrote a neighborhood guide for 
In the world of coffee brewers, there’s a pretty big gap between SCA-certified home brewers, like the 