Spacebar Coffee, George Town

Coffee is a getaway.

For us, that’s a weekend getaway in Penang’s heritage zone, in the heart of George Town. We wake to the muffled clatter of the streets below, where vendors and hawkers have been up for hours already.

We are not tourists, we tell ourselves; there is no timed-to-the-minute schedule to adhere to. But it’d be a shame to spend the whole day in bed, as tempting as it is.

Let’s have coffee.

After exiting Little India, we walk towards Gat Lebuh Chulia, then right into Lebuh Victoria, where we find Spacebar Coffee at the entrance of Awesome Canteen Penang and Sekeping Victoria. Baristas Joachim Leong and Shean Tan hail from Kuala Lumpur and have been dazzling Penangites with their brand of specialty coffee for the past six months.

We cool down with single origin iced lattes. Spacebar Coffee currently uses beans from Three Little Birds and The Roast Things; the local coffee community is a tightly knit one. A slice of their homemade Strawberry Summer Cake is just the touch sweetness needed to go with our cuppas.

Coffee on the island—now that’s a holiday.

不是來檳城旅行的，我們對自己說。
我們要的是一個輕鬆、悠閒的週末，
所以著名的景點和熱門美食都不在我們的行程里，
應該說我們連行程表都沒有，一切隨性隨心；

用了早午餐後，我們散步到Spacebar Coffee。
兩位來自吉隆坡的老闆，快樂的做著自己喜歡的事，
從意式咖啡、單品手沖到蛋糕，
每一杯咖啡，每一份糕點都讓人感受到他們濃濃的誠意。
炎熱的午後，懶洋洋的坐在咖啡館里，享受著冰咖啡和蛋糕，
時間仿佛也和我們一樣，放慢了腳步，
加上那斑駁的墻壁，淡淡的綠意和徐徐的微風，
是這趟週末旅途中最難忘的風景。