What's the point in using a travel agent?

[NM]

I drink tea on flights rarely - mainly water, or the ocassional alcoholic beverage (for medicinal sleeping purposes ) or fruit smoothies (pre-breakfast wake-ups).

The beverage consumption witnessed in the Qantas Club lounge must have been very medicinal. Definately brewed, but the leaves of a different plant, not even passing as herbal tea at any stretch of the immagination .

 

[icarus]

I am a hopeless caffeine addict, but have given up drinking it when flying - too many espressos + not enough sleep and I starting thinking I can see coughroaches everywhere (I am completely phobic about coughroaches!)

But in Jamaica there are more interesting local stimulants, of course.

And the voice in my head has now switched from Gough to Shane Bourne: "I say, I say, I say! Your wife's going to the West Indies, you say? Jamaica?"

 

[Sequel]

No, she went of her own accord. hahaha

 

[icarus]

Boom boom!

 

[oz_mark]

You'll never get affordable bad coffee insurance in the US - the odds are just too overwhelming. [/snark mode off]

Is there a suggestion here that decent coffee can be found in the U.S. if you want to pay?? I need some tips, I certainly struggled to find a good coffee.

 

[icarus]

OT - American coffee

Sadly, no, not really. I meant that the odds of getting bad coffee in the US were so overwhelmingly in favour that no insurer would be prepared to wear the risk.

Here's a really odd thing - by far the best coffee I have ever had in America was in the "European" style coffee stand in the foyer of the Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah. The espresso was as good as anything you'd get here in Oz (and nearly as good as I can make it on my own Gaggia). Though if you want a latte or somehing them you have to ask them not to ruin it by diluting the good espresso with 20 ounces of milk. Ask for the "small" cup (still larger than a "large" cup here) and ask them to fill it only halfway.

Bizarre that you can get better coffee in Utah, where 70% of the population is Mormon and can't touch caffeine, than in cities like San Francisco and New York, which are full of European migrants, but there it is. The hotel has one of those fabulous Gensaco machines with the eagleon top, and a barista who really knew what he was doing.

 

[NM]

Is there a suggestion here that decent coffee can be found in the U.S. if you want to pay?? I need some tips, I certainly struggled to find a good coffee.

I have only found one place to get a decent coffee in the USA. A work colleague (an ex-pat Brit living in Ft Worth) bought a very expensive espresso machine (like US$2500) and brings coffee beans back from all over the world on his travels. When in Ft Worth I normally work from his home office and partake in good coffees in the mornings, and we share a few beers around his pool in the evenings. A great arrangement.