In my younger and more vulnerable years - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the more exotic parts of the world.
That's a mash-up of the opening lines of two famous novels. If you're on our mailing list, you know that the first 10 people to identify the two novels will have a bottle of lovely white wine that you can pick up on your next visit. You just have to pick it up in the next two weeks (because we lose track of stuff after that) and note that it is not for on-premise consumption. It's for taking home.
So in my younger and more vulnerable years, I did travel around a bit. I learned a lot about heat in Andalusia. Andalusia is in the South of Spain. In the summer it gets quite hot, quite ridiculously hot. There is a reason they invented gazpacho there. Quite literally everyone in Andalusia has a blender in the refrigerator at least partially full of this cooling tomato, bread and vinegar soup. It's offered to guests like the Irish offer tea. Acidic liquids cool you down on a hot afternoon (think lemonade). I also learned that drinking espresso on a hot afternoon has the same effect, as with many other bitter things.
Plants have a cooling effect as well. When you ascend the The Alhambra in Granada you will find lush gardens and trees and a temperature 15 degrees cooler than outside its walls. In the center courtyard of The Cathedral of Seville (originally a mosque), you will find orange trees planted and a similar drop in temperature. Now we don't have The Alhambra to offer, nor do we have any orange trees, but our outside cafe is blooming nicely and it is the perfect place to spend a late afternoon or evening in New Brunswick.
And I would like to point out, "We've come a long way baby!"