Tea Time

The other day, as I sipped some tasty coffee purchased in Haiti, I thought, I should write a few posts devoted to the best drinks I've had while traveling. Here's the first.



At home, I almost never drink tea with milk.  It seems like any time I add milk, I dilute the tea too much and ruin the taste.  But Chloe knew exactly the ratio of milk to water that would make the perfect cup.  Her husband, Dave, had a pretty good knack for it too.  The three of us would reconvene at their London flat every evening during the week that I was there—Dave and Chloe coming from work or acting class or hockey practice, and I from sightseeing—and I could usually count on one of them offering me a cup of tea.  And it was always delicious.  Maybe they just knew how to pour it.  Or maybe it had something to do with the milk, or the tea itself.  The British do have centuries of experience buying tea, after all. (Chloe is from South Africa, but she’s a UK citizen now, so I can refer to her as British.)

During that leg of my trip—from London to Dublin to Belfast to Edinburgh—I was a devoted tea drinker.  Everywhere I had it, whether it was at a café, a restaurant, Dave and Chloe’s flat, or my friend Stew’s apartment in Dublin, it was light brown and milky and flavorful.  When I’m at home, I trade off pretty regularly between coffee and tea.  Both drinks have their charms for me.  But after those two weeks in the UK and Ireland, I was ready to commit to tea full-time.  That is, until I got to Spain.

The Eye

The view from Trafalgar Square

In regards to summer

I've found this handy little widget that will give shivering souls such as myself hope.
Enjoy.

Beard Update

I just realized that I never posted an update about my facial hair.  So here it is.

I ended up paying my friend 50 bucks a few days after that previous post last month.  I was sick of the beard after letting it grow for nearly four weeks, and the girl I had just started dating was sick of it after about four hours.  I'm just not a long-beard kind of guy.  Anything over about 10 days is pushing it for me.

I don't regret giving up on the bet (Though I am still working on bulking up, and I'm about four or five pounds from my goal weight.  My friend and I are in the gym a few days a week.), but I do regret buying shampoo for my beard.  Now I've got a whole bottle of Head and Shoulders and nothing to use it on.

Is it summer yet?

Until about a week ago, we had had a relatively dry fall and winter here in Western Washington.  Now, the rain has come back and begun making up for lost time.  Today at work I mentioned that I couldn’t wait until it was summer.  One of my coworkers responded by saying that because we live in this terrible, dreary, gray, soggy climate (my description), it makes our vacation time more special.  We get to go away to warm, sunny places during our time off, and therefore we really appreciate those nice places and our time off. 

That may be true, but I’d also like to be able to appreciate the place where I live.  And yes, I could just suck it up and look on the bright side, see the glass as half full, etc., etc., and be thankful that I don’t live in Siberia or something.  Or I could save up some money and, instead of just traveling temporarily to a nice place, maybe try living there.  Yeah, maybe do that.  Or just spend more time traveling.  We’ll see.