Morning coffee

So I’m sitting here in Geoff’s house overlooking the water looking generally south. I know I’m still thousands of miles away, but it is an odd feeling to think that there’s really nothing between be and Antarctica. Anyway, I could use a cup of coffee about now which reminded me that coffee isn’t coffee down here.

My first morning on my own here, I went to the restaurant in the hotel and found a rather typical buffet. Eggs, sausage, hash browns, cereal, etc. But no coffee. I went to the bar where I could see a woman working at an espresso machine and asked if they had any coffee. She said, “Sure, what would you like?” I kinda thought I had just asked, but I answered again “just a coffee” which resulted in a blank look so I added “with cream” which yielded a more puzzled look. “aw…right…a flat white then?” to which I simply agreed to end the conversation.

A few minutes later, she brought over what I probably would have called a Latte. Later I asked Analie and Wendy from eTech about this. Seems Australians don’t really have “just coffee”. A Flat White isn’t a latte either as there are latte’s on the menu. Australians definitely do not run on Dunkin. I have yet to have enough time to really run through how all this works, but I did find a posting on yet another American’s blog that was clearly as confused as I that seems to add some detail to the issue. For now, I’m just going to ask for a “Flat White”.

Tags: coffee, food, Travel