Tuesday 17 February 2015

Happy Places: Bagels and Beans

I still need to write about a buckload of things but I never seem to have the time and when I have I usually forget about it. I'm sorry for the silence! Here's a little post for in between since I'm working on editing my photos from Disneyland and want to write a huge post about it since I took a LOT of pictures, haha.
To begin here's a post with lots of instagram pictures of varying quality. I hope it doesn't bother you too much. If you are interested, my instagram is @ilovemyhappiness and I post a lot of happy stuff.



Anyway, I thought it would be time to write about one of my favorite places: Bagels and Beans!
For the people who don't know, Bagels and Beans is a Dutch lunchroom francise originating from Amsterdam, who, unsurprisingly, make really, really good bagels and coffee. But to me, it has become more than that.




For some reason I always find myself in Bagels and Beans if I need some cheering up. There's nearly always one in the neighborhood. The vibe and the environment just radiate happiness and more often than not I've found myself to sit in one of their lunchrooms all afternoon with a matcha latte or a bagel with avocado and hummus (yes, they are vegan friendly!) and my painting supplies. I have finished many paintings there and will probably finish many paintings to come. It's a very relaxing place to be and the decorations make me think of summer and warmth. Most of the lunchrooms also have a terrace which is awesome because painting outside is one of my favorite things.




I often get really fun and nice reactions from the staff when I'm painting and even though I do it all the time all around the city people still get surprised when I ask for a glass of water with my order and whip out my paint set. I have even painted with their coffee once! It creates very nice sepia paintings which smell lovely. The picture above was taken by one of the staff of a Bagels and Beans near my mom's house when I was painting because I wanted to do something comforting after having been to the GP who had stuck about 20 needles in my arm. Of course I ended up here.


This was what I was painting that day, by the way.


The only tiny downside is that their vegan options are limited. The staff is very friendly and willing to veganise your bagel and all of the coffees can be made with soya milk but they really only have one truly vegan bagel option on the menu and it's a bit dull compared to the rest (bagel with hummus and greens). It would be nice if they had more vegan options because they would automatically result in people eating less meat because non-vegan people would probably also order them. Their juices are obviously vegan too but their smoothies aren't. Aside from the tea, their only hot vegan drink is the Matcha Latte (pictured with my face :p).

Vegan food and drink needs to be widely available because it is awesome and not only truly cruelty free but far better for the environment as well. They are very concerned about the environment and try to work with as much organic products as possible, which is awesome, but plant based foods are so much more environmentally friendly than animal based foods!
 It is also a dream of mine that they stock a vegan hot chocolate (Oatly's oat chocolate milk is the best!! hint hint) so if they read this somehow, I hope they listen. :p

Love,
Jopie