Coffee time is all the time

One thing that I heard over and over about Spain was that the coffee in the cafes is fantastic, and unlike anything you can get in America.  Being a coffee lover, of course I tried this famous "cafe con leche" the first chance that I had.  So far I've tried it at two different cafes.  Honestly, I can't say that it tastes any better than American lattes, which is what it is the most similar too.  Don't get me wrong, it is delicious.  I think that what people rave about isn't so much the coffee itself as the experience of ordering it, though.  Unlike at Starbucks or any other coffee shop in America where they make your coffee behind a counter and then hand it to you over the ledge, here they make you an espresso shot and give you your cup and saucer with a sugar packet.  Then they take a pitcher of milk (prepared the same was as at Starbucks) and pour it in to your cup right in front of you.  I have to say, it is pretty cool to be able to see what actually goes in to your drink, instead of just being tossed a paper cup and seen out the door.  

The coffee at home is another story.  I have a certain friend (I'm talking about you, Shannon) who doesn't like old coffee.  I can understand this; once it's been sitting for a few hours it starts to taste different.  How it works here is that my host mom makes a full pot of coffee, and we microwave what we want each morning from that pot throughout the week, until the pot is empty.  The last pot lasted us 4 days.  Then she brews more.  

I microwaved my coffee for myself this morning while my most mom watched.  The first two days she made it for me, and yesterday I skipped it.  She was really confused about why I was putting the coffee in the microwave without putting the milk in it first.  It turned out that I was pretty lucky to have only been making half a cup.  

I suppose I should mention that pouring coffee out of the pot is like pouring ink. 

I microwaved my cup, and then poured in the amount of milk that I would add at home, and stirred it in.  It did nothing.  The coffee was just as black as it was before.  I added a little more milk, and then a little more, stirring the whole time.  By the time the coffee was the color that I usually make it at home, I had added nearly half a cup of milk.  No wonder she wanted me to put the milk in before I microwaved it.  

The other thing was that all that milk didn't make the coffee particularly weak, not by a long shot.  When our pot starts running low again I'm going to have to ask to watch how she makes it, just to see how on earth the coffee could be that thick and strong.