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