I struggle with sleeping in much more than she so I’m often the first one up and certainly the first one in the kitchen. She’s a coffee drinker where I prefer tea or juice most mornings but I still love to ritualistically pull down the burr grinder, carafe and French press from their top shelf and start a kettle. I fill the carafe with water as hot as the tap will allow, fill the grinder with a predetermined amount of beans and pulverize. I hate my French press, a shatterproof plastic thing lacking any sort of elegance, but I can’t bring myself to replace it.

Once the water boils, I dump the bean soil into the press then fill it up halfway and stir with a purple chopstick fated for just this purpose as its twin was lost in a move or behind the stove. Usually by the time I fill the press full, her waking noises are struggling over The Long Winters or Sonny Rollins or whatever it is I’m inflicting on a quiet morning because I’m the insensitive type who thinks that everyone within earshot should be awake if I am. I set a timer for five minutes.

I’ll dawdle for a minute, add a little water to one of the mugs I’ve collected from local coffee shops then nuke it for a minute to heat it up. Her main concern is that the coffee is strong but temperature is my obsession so I preheat every vessel. The timer alarms its noisy electronic interruption. I empty the warmed carafe, plunge the press and transfer the fresh brew. I pour her a cup, no cream or sugar, and return to find her sitting up, rubbing her eyes. She always smiles, looks up with those beautiful eyes, hands outstretched. She takes a sip and tells me she loves me.

If you’re real lucky, lucky like I am, you’re blessed with wonderful friends who, despite the fact that they literally live a full continent away from one another and are deeply, madly, still newly in love, agree to spend a day walking around the city you’re visiting.

On this walk, we tilted from tourist district to full on moms-with-strollers ‘hood and Jason guided us toward the most adorable candy store with a name that means “crumb” his French wife-to-be translated for us. Cakes, candies and other confections awaited us while Anna squeed with delight over the nickel candies she recognized from back home as a kiddo. I sorted through several, made some obvious choices (the chocolate bourbon bar, the bacon maple lollipop, a handful of fleur de sel caramels) when I found myself eavesdropping on the woman behind the counter.

“We just got a box of black truffle chocolate bars,” she was explaining into the phone.

I was intrigued, to say the least. She continued her conversation, I continued rudely listening, until finally it was time to pay.

“Did I hear you say you had black truffle chocolate?” I’ll admit, I was rather unapologetic for invading her privacy.

She seemed hesitant to sell me one of the bars — they hadn’t tried them yet, weren’t sure they were going to stock them or something. I told her I didn’t care, didn’t care what they cost, either, I’d love to have one. Twelve dollars for two-and-a-half ounces later and I was the proud owner of a Mast Brothers Dark Chocolate + Black Truffles, Sea Salt (72% cacao from Madagascar, because when you’re paying $5/oz for chocolate you want to know it’s provenance) bar.

We kept wandering and hit Dolores Park, where we used our scarves to wipe down a bench and try the hard fought chocolate (the salted caramels didn’t make it a block). The salt comes first then quickly the bitter dark chocolate. There’s truffle there to be sure but you have to search for it, occasionally an earthy clod stands out, but mostly it’s a whiff. We took it in for a bit then decided a glass of wine might serve us well, which a just-opened bar was happy to help us with. I attempted a Zinfandel and the two complemented each other nicely.

Soon, new confederates joined us, there were more bottles, plates of cheese and recommended starters, more stories and catching up. Jason and Anna left for a date.