I needed a break from the unrelenting coronavirus pandemic, so I did what I usually so when I have a bit of time to kill and need an escape from messy, painful reality: load up a Second Life avatar, and do a keyword search under Places in the Search menu, to see what I could find. I searched for ‘winter”, and in the first page of search results, I discovered the Rainy Café!
The Rainy Café is a snug, cosy, and welcoming coffee shop tucked away in a skybox located high above the Second Life mainland. For winter, the owner decided to change the rain to snow!
Inside, it was clear that somebody had gone to a great deal of time and effort to decorate the interior, with many delightful touches (see the teddy bear, the string of photographs, and the space heater next to the window?). A number of different machines dispense coffee, hot chocolate, or apple cider for your avatar to hold.
I decided to take a seat and stay a little while, holding a somewhat lazy, meandering conversation with the other avatars whom I encountered there, while the snow gently fell outside the café windows in the surrounding woods.
(Although Second Life supports voice chat, most people still use text chat out of habit. At one point, I was having a side conversation with one of the café patrons in a second window, while simultaneously carrying on a conversation in the main room!)
If you want to visit yourself, here’s the SLURL: the Rainy Café in Winter. Bring a friend, or perhaps you’ll meet one there!