A nice little place. It took a while for someone to come take my order and I'm dozing off when I finally hear a "Bonjour monsieur." The coffee wakes me up and it's accompanied by two packets of sugar cubes and three big loose brown sugar cubes as well. More sugar than could fit in the cup even if it were completely empty. I dip a rough brown sugar lump slightly into the coffee and watch it absorb the coffee up towards my fingers like a rapidly darkening sponge. The sugar assortment has a saucer of its own, with a purplish flower design.

The place is relatively empty now, almost no one sitting at the tables; a few people gather around the bar. A couple of potted plants sit on a table a few feet in front of me--one of the pots sits in a large ceramic frog that rubs his oversized belly with both hands as if he were pregnant or had just eaten a particularly satisfying bowling ball. There is not a green plastic Heineken ashtray on my square marbled table, but most of the other tables have one. The chairs are black metal with a wicker type seat. Red flowers sit in the flower box just outside my window. It's started to rain.