Invite Tea Into Your Go, Go, Go City Vacation
The word “vacation” most often summons visions of towels on beaches and boogie boards in waves. Of tents and backpacks and flower-spangled hikes. But in fact, many of our vacations include visits to big cities. We post photos of Westminster Abbey on Instagram. We spotlight blistered pizzas in Naples on Facebook, and broadcast tours of Tokyo and Buenos Aires on all of our social channels.
Sometimes, too, vacation even involves more trips to nearby cities, to catch the cultural amenities we often overlook during the rest of the year. We find ourselves swinging through Denver more often during summer during staycations, to catch a Denver Art Museum exhibit or take another spin through the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
City vacations enhanced with tea
Even though many cities have restaurants and coffee shops on every block, we still pack one food item—tea— for these trips. Why begin the day with a weak brew made from the hotel’s lineup of stale tea bags? We like sipping our favorite beverage all day, too, but chance encounters with high-quality tea rarely happen when we’re strolling a city.
Fortunately, tea is extremely lightweight. A single ounce, for example, is enough for as many as 15 cups. Given its portability, we never shrink from bringing along enough tea to power our mornings, decorate our afternoons and punctuate our evenings.
But which teas to bring? As the owners of a chain of tea shops and a tea importing business, we have lots to choose from! One simple tip: bring your favorites. If you turn to an organic Assam for your morning pleasure, for example, pack enough for the trip. Another bit of advice: strategize teas for different times of the day. While morning might call for a strong black, a grassy green or earthy oolong might better complement the afternoon. And for evening, you might want an herbal tea that helps soothe nerves and aid sleep.
We’ve got ideas, too! Consider these teas for your next city vacation.
City Vacation Tea: London Fog (Ku Cha Imperial + Lady Earl Grey)
The great city of London serves as the inspiration for this DIY blend. Our lovely employee Kitty came up with the recipe, which we often brew in the morning, before we begin a day of museums, castles and food tours.
Earl Grey was Queen Elizabeth’s favorite tea. Lady Earl Grey offers the same balance of black tea and bergamot, with wonderful additions of lavender and lemon peel. It always puts us in a London frame of mind. Along with Lady Earl Grey, this custom blend also includes Ku Cha Imperial, a fine Ceylon black tea in the English style, with calendula and pomegranate.
Brew them both together, at a ratio of two parts Ku Cha Imperial to one part Lady Earl Grey. Add a dollop of cream. If you favor a little sweetness, include a little honey or sugar.
Welcome to the big city, and enjoy your day!
City Vacation Tea: Mile High Chai
We love cities so much that we named a bespoke blend, Mile High Chai, after one of our favorite cities in the world, Denver. Our closest big city is a national treasure, with a huge array of arts organizations, restaurants, walkable neighborhoods, parks and professional sports. It’s no shocker that during the past two decades it became one of the top cities transplants. Tourism has ballooned across the city as well.
No matter what city you are calling home during vacation, we recommend this stimulating brew. If you like chai, this one is a superstar. We base the organic blend on our vanilla black tea, and then add many of the hallmarks of chai: ginger, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, black peppercorn, fennel seeds, licorice root and allspice.
It’s here to awaken your senses in the morning, and to keep them lively all afternoon. Spiked with a little cream and honey, it’s like sipping holiday cookies, only with far less sweetener and calories. This one is just as pretty and arresting iced as it is hot. On trips, this often gets chilled and stored in a thermos, for sips between bistros or while strolling through a park.
City Vacation Tea: Organic CHA Relax
Beach vacations tend to revolve around kicking back and taking it easy. City vacations? The opposite. We tread from museums to landmarks, head out on walking tours of historic districts and wander skinny streets looking for after-dinner gelato. For many people, a city vacation is all about go, go, go.
But then it’s time for a bit of slow, slow, slow. And that’s not always easy. One of a great city’s appeals is its hubbub: the busy bars and crowded streets stand as some of their principal attractions. When we head to cities for vacation, we desire civic excitement. The beach and mountain trips are more about escaping the action.
So we always bring along our custom CHA Relax on city vacations. We designed this special organic Ku Cha blend, created in collaboration with the University of Colorado’s Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA), to ripen serenity and peace. To do that, we begin with green rooibos, a tea made out of leaves from a South African shrub. One of rooibos’s many health benefits: its punch of electrolytes helps enormously with hydration. To this base we add ginkgo leaf, which boosts mental clarity; and elder flower, chamomile and spearmint, all of which advance goals of achieving a sense of calm.
Drinking CHA Relax after a day of city fun helps reduce stress and introduce quiet into our busy brains. But it also improves sleep, something that can get disrupted during city vacations due to the many people in the city having fun (often late into the evening).
Enjoy your city vacations this year! And don’t forget the all-important tea.
