Hot Tea Adventures

Why is a good cup of tea so hard to find? Unfortunately, for me, the only places to get hot tea (away from home), are coffee shops. Of course those places are not going to have a large selection of not-coffee, but it makes me sad. Even the places that say “coffee and tea” in their name only tend to have adequate hot tea. I love going into places like that to write because even though I don’t drink coffee, I think it smells divine. There is something about that aroma that speaks to my muse and brings my creativity out.

I’m not asking much. I drink plain black tea, typically named British breakfast or English tea time. I’m not asking for adventurous flavors or strange mixes. Just a good strong, wonderful cup of regular tea, and some sugar please.

I’m sure some of you reading this know of places that I would kill to visit but while I don’t live in a small town, I don’t live in a big city with a lot of choices either. We have many Starbucks, which I have always thought was only alright, but they recently changed brands of tea, to a less desirable one.

I’ve been to a bookstore in town that has a cafe inside it. They have great tea, amazing, perfect, exactly the flavor I want. The problem is I keep the exact tea at home and I can drink that whenever I want. Plus I don’t really care for the place. It’s tolerable but it gets rather loud because it’s across the street from a high school.

There is a local coffee shop here that previously only had a few choices in flavors and none of them were for me. I was confused as to why they didn’t have a plain option. This was particularly a downer because the place is great, especially for writing. The atmosphere is soothing and the people really try to make sure you have a good experience. It’s nice and quiet too. It’s too bad the tea I tried tasted like flowers.

A couple of weeks ago I went to their website, on the off-chance that they added new flavors, and was astonished to find they added a tea I could drink! I couldn’t get there fast enough. I went in, dragging my husband and looked at the cute tea menu they had set up. Want to guess what wasn’t on it? As my kids say: FML. I asked if they had the flavor I wanted and the guy working said they decided not to carry that one anymore. They only had it for a few months so I was quite surprised. He suggested another tea that was the closest to regular black tea. I looked up the ingredients online and found that it contained blueberries. I’m allergic to salicylates, found in pretty much every berry and most fruits, hence the pickiness about tea flavors. I left sad. I sent them an email today about it, which is why this is all on my mind. I may have pleaded for them to keep serving the one I can drink. 🙂

There are two more places for me to try, but they are tiny and each time I’ve gone, both were so busy there were lines out the door and I never made it in.

Maybe I merely need to try coffee again and force myself to like it. Nah, the mental block is too strong for that. Read The Surgery if you want an explanation of my weirdness about coffee. For now I go to the coffee and tea cafe in the local supermarket and drink the adequate stuff when I want to get out and write.

There is a small ray of tea hope on the horizon. A new place is opening sometime later this year. I hear they will have a better brand but I’ll believe that once I’m addicted.

Do I have to give up my writer status if I don’t drink coffee?

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If you think my being overly selective over tea is bad, wait until you hear about the ongoing search for the right flavor of gum each time they discontinue the ones I like!