WOW!!!!!! First post in a long time! But now that I have a blogging app on my phone, I’ll be able to keep up on my Starbucks project posts much faster now. And man do I have a lot to catch up on!
Anyway, it’s Saturday, June 2, and Sims and I are driving back to London from Blackpool and decided to stop in Nottingham to check out what’s supposed to be the coolest, hippest city in England. We’re about to head over to Nottingham Castle, but first! Some coffee!
Date: 11-10-2011
Drink: Venti Green Tea
Food: White Chocolate and Raspberry Mini Cake
a sprightly Simeon!
So, on our way home from some lessons in Dulwich, we decided to drive into Croydon instead of all the way down to Sutton, especially since we are now staying in an area called Wallington, which is much closed to Croydon than to Sutton. Can I say? Bad mistake. I’ve heard people say Croydon is ridiculous, and we’ve driven into Croydon before to drop off friends at hotel, etc. But seriously, Croydon is ridiculous. We drove around in circles for hours with Sims yelling at me because I should supposedly be able to tell where I’m going since I had the map right in front of me (on the phone’s GPS). The only problem was, the phone doesn’t tell you which streets are one-way, and the directions were taking us the wrong way on streets and such. And the Starbucks cafe listing on the phone didn’t mention it was inside the mall!
hidden away in the corner of the mall
Date: February 27th, 2011
Drink: Venti Quod Vanilla Latte, Grande Chai Tea Latte, Tall Latte
Food: 3 breakfast sandwiches, 1 Chonga bagel with 3 cream cheeses, 1 Classic Coffee Cake, 1 Yoghurt Parfait
Starbucks in Bellingham off Exit 258
You get the idea that we’re busy. Really busy. So busy that our idea of “home” is actually rather skewed. Most people think of being home as being physically home. We think of being home as being somewhere on the West Coast. Anywhere from California up to Canada. Therefore, when we’re “home”, we’re not actually home, per se.
We’re currently working on our Samba, revamping the routine and getting it ready for the Blackpool Dance Festival and, the weekend after, for our Bulgarian National Championships in Sofia. Both of those comps are in June, so we need to start on our routine now for it to be more or less ready for June. Anyway, our longest running coach lives up in Vancouver, BC. You’ve already seen him. There is a picture of me with him in my post about the Steveston Starbucks Café. You can read about it and see the pictures of it here: https://starbuckproject.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/steveston-british-columbia-canada/
lovely fireplace inside the cafe
We planned to start our routine with our coach on Sunday the 27th, so we slept at the dance studio Saturday night and got up at 6:00am to leave by 6:30. Our lessons started at 10am in Vancouver, and we wanted to give ourselves extra time to drive up and to stop and get breakfast. For some reason, a couple of our students/friends decided they wanted to hop in the car and drive up with us. So three of us took off from Bellevue at 6:30 for our quick little road trip up to Vancouver. On the way, we pulled off at Exit 258 in Bellingham, WA, where we met up with the fourth member of our party. We sat down to a breakfast besides a nice gas fireplace and more or less had a great time. The workers at this café were lively and friendly even at an early morning Sunday, the food was good, and the café was large and comfy. Particularly beside the fire. I really enjoyed this café. Nice work, Starbucks.
Date: January 31, 2011
Drink: Grande Triple Skinny Vanilla Latte (it’s what I ordered, not what I got)
the SB stand at San Jose Airport
We were only home from England for two days before we had to take off to San Jose for the weekend. We have to do this every January, year after year, so don’t pity us. Travel is tough, but in this case, it’s extremely necessary.
Anyway, we got home from England very late on Tuesday night, and we taught a full schedule on Wednesday and Thursday, then hopped on the plane for the first flight out to San Jose on Friday morning. Of course, I grabbed a coffee at the Starbucks stand at SeaTac Airport, in the North Satellite, but I’ve already logged that location, which you can check out if you like here:
https://starbuckproject.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/seatac-airport-north-satellite-seattle-usa/
When we arrived in San Jose, Simeon ran off to rent the car while the students who flew down on our flight with us headed into baggage claim to fetch the bags. And there the Green Siren was waiting, at a very plasticky stand in the baggage claim. I couldn’t resist. I was exhausted, running on two hours of sleep.
So I ordered my individual drink of choice, which is really just a smaller version of the drink that Simeon and I like to share. When I got it, however, it was not what I ordered. I could have given it back; unfortunately, I was already out of the airport and waiting for the hotel shuttle with all of my luggage before I tasted my coffee and realized it was missing the vanilla syrup. Not very happy. Truly. How hard is it to hear “Vanilla Latte” and add vanilla syrup to the drink? But the two ladies behind the stand were more concerned in their own conversation than in making my drink.
That’s the way it goes…..
Date: January 25, 2011
Drink: Venti Quod Vanilla Latte
Food: Chocolate Chunk Chocolate Cookie
Heathrow Airport, Terminal 3
This café is more like just a stand, which is unfortunate, because I think there is a Prezzo or something like that which is another café right next door, and they have a special seating area reserved just for their customers, even though it’s not even connected to the café. It’s just a boxed off area in the middle of the waiting lounge in Terminal 3. But anyway, we couldn’t sit there, and Starbucks doesn’t have any sitting area. So we went to the bar just across the waiting lounge and ordered some food and a couple of beers. Then after the quick meal, we headed over to Starbucks for our normal drink of choice before making our ways to our newly assigned gate. That was interesting, too. When we got to the gate, we had to open the cup so the lady checking our passports could see that we weren’t hiding anything inside the cup. Interesting, but not as interesting as the Starbucks at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, where the Air France attendant actually made me throw out my full cup of coffee because the customers are not allowed to have a cup of coffee with them during take-off. I haven’t run into that before or since.
Date: 24th December, 2011
Drink: Quod Venti Vanilla Latte
There are no good Starbucks cafes in Dulwich. I’m serious. NONE. So in order to go to Starbucks if we get to Dulwich early, which happens often since we always give ourselves extra extra time to get through Streatham, we go to the Starbucks cafe in the Clapham High Street. It’s a great cafe, with a small outdoor area where we can enjoy the sun when IT’S NOT January. This is also a common sight to view a phenomenon I like to call “The Stroller Phenomenon”. I will write more on this in the future.
the cafe in the Clapham High Street
Date: 23-1-2011
Drink: Venti Quod Vanilla Latte & Grande Triple Cappuccino
I’ve said this many times before… dancers drink coffee!!! Or have I said that on this blog? Anyway, for those of you who don’t know us, my husband and I are competitive ballroom dancers and the national representatives for Bulgaria. We travel all around the world to compete and generally push ourselves to the brink of exhaustion. As a result, we drink coffee, lots of coffee; between hard physical work, hard mental work (ballroom dancing is very mentally challenging), needing to constantly be in a good mood, and doing it all on low carb and low calorie diets, coffee is a lifeline. So don’t judge… coffee is necessary.
Kingston High Street, Kingston-upon-Thames, England
Which brings me to the Starbucks cafe in the High Street of Kingston-upon-Thames in Southern Greater London. We normally don’t go to this cafe because parking in enormously expensive. However, Kingston School of Dance, where ballroom legends Richard and Janet Gleave and Andrew Sinkinson teach, is just a short 5 minute walk away. Normally if we get to Kingston early we’ll drive up to Surbiton to get a coffee, but today we were at Kingston only 20 minutes early, not enough time to drive to Surbiton. Besides, Andrew asked us to get him a cappuccino, with three shots that day (he needed it). So, away to the High Street we skipped, to get ourselves and our quickly fading teacher a nice morning coffee.
Date: January 21, 2011
Drink: Venti Quad Vanilla Latte
the cafe in Sutton we normally go to
I wrote earlier (back in December of 2010) about some of our regular Starbucks haunts in London, when I logged the Surbiton Starbucks in Kingston-upon-Thames. The Starbucks on Sutton High Street is yet another of our regular haunts. In actuality, there are two Starbucks cafes on the Sutton High Street, as well as a Café Nero just up the way. I think coffee is very much in demand in Sutton, which is fine by us. But the café we always visit while on the High Street is the bigger café, one that is a café in its own right, while the other location is more or less a little counter attached to a mall with some seating. They always both seem to be busy though, and so does Nero, so as I said, coffee is in demand in Sutton.
the smaller cafe we almost never frequent in Sutton
Our favorite café, however, is very centrally located, with a Boots and a Superdrug – both drugstores I go to often – only a short walk away. There is also an ASDA, the UK version of Walmart (it even has the Walmart smiley face, but it’s bright green instead of yellow), where we do all of our grocery shopping. Not to mention it’s comfortable, warm, the male barista we normally see is great and likes to chat about the differences between UK and USA cafes, and the internet is only mildly slow. If anyone gets an email from us while we’re in England, or chats with me on Facebook, or reads this post, chances are I’m either in this café in Sutton, or in Surbiton.
Date: January 20, 2011
Drink: Venti Quad Vanilla Latte
Food: Chocolate Chip Cookie
I love Salisbury. If there was one city in all of England where I would move, it would be Salisbury. We actually went to Salisbury on our way back from seeing Stonehenge for the first time, but I’ve been to Salisbury before. And being that Salisbury is the deathplace of a love of mine – the third Duke of Buckingham, first creation – the city holds a special place in my heart.
Starbucks in Salisbury
The best part about the city is that the massive spire of the cathedral is omnipresent as you drive through the streets. And to make matters even better, we chose a cloudless sunny day to go out
a view of Starbucks from the other side of the old Market Cross
to Stonehenge and Salisbury. Though, the sun did hardly anything to warm our bones, which were chilled through and through from the biting cold sweeping across the Salisbury Plain. That’s why we needed to stop in Starbucks for a hot drink to warm us up. And it was a charming Starbucks.
For a more detailed description of our outing to Salisbury and Stonehenge, see my post at http://korastoynova.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/stonehenge-and-salisbury/ and for a more complete gallery of our full trip to Bournemouth, Salisbury, and Stonehenge, see our dancer’s gallery at http://www.emotionsdancesport.com/uk-championships-2011.htm.
location of Salisbury relative to London and Bournemouth
Date: January 19, 2011 and January 21, 2011
Drink: Venti Quad Vanilla Latte, both times
Food: 2 Chocolate Chip Cookies
Someone from Starbucks, explain to me: why oh why do you not have a Starbucks Café in the downtown area of Bournemouth? I can promise you, if you had one on the high street near the Bournemouth International Centre, it would be packed with people. At least… packed with dancers during the UK Championships. But if the busy-ness of Starbucks Cafes around the UK at any time of day or year are anything to go by, I feel confident it would be busy year round. Anyways, for shame, Starbucks. Our choices
the evening of the 19th (can you see the big rhinestone glued on my forehead?)
were narrowed down to Costa Coffee (yuck, plus no free wifi), Caffe Nero (not bad, but expensive!) and a local coffee shop called Café Amour. We ended up there, upstairs, using their wifi that was limited to only 45 minutes. For shame, Starbucks, for shame!
The closest Starbucks to the Bournemouth city centre was some high street about a ten minute drive away, in a suburb of Bournemouth called Westbourne. Actually it was a very nice café.
on the morning of the 21st
Spacious, with lots of comfortable seating, and the baristas were good fun. Out of the three employees behind the counter, two of them were men that looked like active participants of the local goth or punk scene, which for me is great, cause they’re my kind of people! One was shaved bald except for a patch of hair in the back that reminded me of a landing strip (ha ha) and the other had a very interesting haircut of a mohawk on the back of his head, while in the front his bangs probably reached his shoulders and were brushed forward. Our second goth also had nice Crow-style eyeliner on. Like I said, great. They were seriously have a fun time with their job. And because I came in fresh from the competition, still done up with my competition hair, my competition makeup, and even had a huge Swarovski crystal glued to my forehead (I think you can see it in the picture), they really had a go at me. I loved it. I really hope they’re still there when I go back. And I could see I wasn’t the only one having a good time with these guys. Everyone who ordered a drink had a good laugh with them. They have a way of bringing genuine smiles to everyone’s faces.
Starbucks, if you read this, make sure you give some dibs to the Bournemouth café. I could tell everyone felt really relaxed and happy, and thoroughly enjoyed both the coffee and the company. But if you’re wondering why I’ve abandoned Starbucks for a few days… hello?? No café in Bournemouth?? Are you mad???
an idea of where Bournemouth is relative to London
The Starbucks Project 