Well, so far this trip is about 37.5 hours old, and so few of them have been spent sleeping that I look like Marty Feldman, eye-wise. But there has been tea, and quite a lot of it. And all pretty good.
We started at home with a lovely Lord Petersham. Just the thing after a really bad night’s sleep.
That was easy.
Terrible tea at Adelaide Airport. I guess I panicked. Got a T2 China Jasmine plastic tea bag thingy, it was awful and didn’t drink it. What a rotten welcome it must be to ADL for travelers to get poor tea, poorly made.
So, armed with packets of tea that I had covered will all sorts of impressive labels I made myself “Export Quality Tea Sample” “Hygienically Sealed Bag” etc I braced myself for customs. They could not care have cared less.
So, the only thing you need to know about the next eight or so hours of flying – except that ‘Captain America- The First Avenger’ is not that good, despite having an Australian Nazi in it (Hugo Weaving, not in drag this time for Priscilla fans) is that Lady Devotea and I enjoyed many, many cups of Persian Princess along the way.
And here’s how – with one of those tea tumblers I love. It sure beats the fact that all airlines have what I like to call “Abraham Lincoln tea*”
So, arrived in Singapore really tired, But with six hours on the ground to kill and then about thirteen hours to Barcelona, we weren’t going to sit about in the airport. We decided to head the street markets, and with a little amount of juggling of left Luggage and customs, we wound up in Bugis street.
They sell all sorts of Titbits here, and that’s just from Titbits World!
After the surreal experience of being crammed onto a train and being the only two people of the 200 present who was not actually updating Facebook for the entire journey, it was time for refreshment. Lady Devotea had an iced kiwifruit juice which was pretty nice, but it wasn’t tea, so no picture.
I decided, being in Asia, that the path of least resistance was a sweet, milky iced tea concoction and the honey Iced Milk Bubble tea from this place was excellent. Nice tea base and not too sweet .
So, not bad so far. After a little shopping we headed back to the airport, but not before we paused at “Share tea” where I had a really lovely Iced Classic Red Tea. As I asked for no sugar, I only got some.
All too soon we were back a-plane, but this time, due to a cock-up that Someone at Singapore Airlines will pay dearly for, Lady Devote and I were not exactly together, parted by an aisle and half a row.
So for the first 11 hours of the flight I fumed, played the in-flight version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’ (SingAir owe me at least $3m, must ask for it), saw a great film (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen) saw a terrible film (Fantastic Four) and read some history. Lady D slept fitfully for some of it but mainly covered some serious kindle-miles. Along the way, we went through masses of 1910 to keep us going.
We got talking to a lovely Spanish couple whilst sitting on the tarmac at Milan while the plane refueled and was cleaned. They even turned an air sickness bag inside out and listed many attractions not to miss whilst here in Barcelona for us.
So, having disembarked (NOTE: I could also have said alighted and been on the side of the angels, but listen up Americans: You cannot believe in Judgement Day AND use the word “deplaned” without also believing that the Devil will be using your scrotum for a change purse for all eternity if you do) we walked swiftly away from the plane, and, as a great hue and cry went up as security tried to solve the mystery of all six lavatory sinks being blocked with some sort of unidentified botanical, I repacked my now sparkling tea tumbler and we breezed through Spanish customs.
Hola Barcelona.
Having arrived dead tired and being told our hotel room would be not available for several hours, we got a map. and hit the streets. We were both so tired our sore eyes couldn’t read any places on the map.
But after some attempted telecommunications shopping (FAIL) , banking (FAIL) and new footwear for Lady Devotea’s still Adelaide-Winter-socked-and-booted feet (Success and only 3 euro) we stumbled into The Cafe del Franchesca. And look at this: A TEA MENU
They even had “1001 Nights!” But, sadly, it was some sort of impostor with fruit and flowers in a black/green mix.
So, I had the Darjeeling and tried out my Spanish, which resulted the right drinks, though also one of the wrong ones.
And so, back to the hotel room, where I started this post before succumbing to half an hours’ sleep.
A meal, an adventure with the President of The United States, a lovely saunter with Lady D around the glory that is Barcelona and a decent sleep finds me here, at 2am, finishing this blog on the balcony whilst Barcelona considers gong to bed.
I will now consider how to deal with the lack of tea making facilities in this hotel.
And this is just day 2 of about sixty.
*As in his famous quote: “If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee”
That reminds me of the hellish 47 hours it took me to get from LHR to Sumatra. Must get one of those tea tumblers for travel though. Great idea.
It seems easier to get things out of Australia than in. 😉
I am sure you will manage to find a way around this temporary lack of tea.
Looking forward to day 3, 4, 5 through 60! Love hearing what you and Mrs D are up to…