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I have just returned from the San Francisco Bay Area in California where my best friend lives (he’s in San Jose) where I spent some time in San Francisco/San Jose/Santa Cruz over three days doing tea shopping and going to cafes, as well as attending the San Francisco Tea Festival. I’m having my haul shipped back to me and it should arrive today or tomorrow, but I figured I’d try to jot from (my admittedly abysmal) memory some thoughts/impressions of some of the places I visited.

Day #1 was mainly spent in San Francisco, with a few shopping excursions in Palo Alto and San Jose.

DAVIDsTEA: Since I’ve been coming down with a cold and my insomnia problems keep persisting, making fighting it off even harder, I was really hankering for some warm ginger or licorice root tea that morning, and I also really wanted to restock the Oh Canada! tea I’d sampled recently in my collection. So we stopped at the Palo Alto location on the way to San Francisco. I was heartbroken to be told that Oh Canada! tea was discontinued by the person who worked there?! I mean, I checked their website before I left and it was listed, and… it’s still on their website. But they didn’t have it in store. SIGH. It was like, the one thing I wanted. So I bought an ounce of that Cardamom French Toast everyone talks about instead (I’ve never tried it… hope it lives up to the hype). I also got a cup of Throat Rescue to go, since I really wanted that hot licorice root (cue the groans of 99% of Steepsterites here) for my throat. The fennel was a very dominant flavor, and quite tasty, with the licorice root having a strong finish. It was pretty much what I was craving that morning.

Lovejoy’s Tea Room: Went here for a High Tea lunch. I splurged on the Queen’s Tea because I wanted all the foods (and I ate them all, too!) while my Vegan friend got the Healthy Tea because… well, he’s Vegan and can therefore Have No Fun™. My tea came with two sandwich choices (I got ham and English mustard, of which I discovered that English mustard will put some friggin’ hair on your chest, that stuff is hot! and their daily special which was a delicious cranberry, nut, and turkey sweet sammy), a coleslaw style salad made with cabbage in a caraway cream, an organic spring green salad that had a lot of fresh leafy spinach and tangerines that was really nice, a selection of fresh fruits, and for desserts there was a scone with jam, a crumpet with really tasty lemon curd, a tea biscuit, and you got to select a petit four off a large dessert tray (I got a chocolate filled with a chocolate mousse that was delicious!) The tea is served “traditional English style” (not my favorite since the leaves go bitter in the pot since you can’t remove them from the water and I’m not typically a “milk and sugar” person, so I did have to add milk and sugar to later cups) but I got a black Lavender Vanilla tea that is a house blend and it was very tasty, a nice mix of lavender and vanilla flavor. Again, I wasn’t too crazy about how bitter/astringent it gets later into the tea from the leaves sitting in the pot, but that’s just my personal preference, making me sort of wish I’d selected an herbal, but those first few cups were wonderful!

Rainbow Grocery: I went shopping at this co-op thanks to a tip from derk, thank you derk! The bulk tea and herb section here is fantastic, and I got sooo many teas and herbs for a pittance (I think I paid around $16 total?) I can’t remember exactly what I bought since I shipped my haul from my trip home, but I remember I got some peppermint leaf, hibiscus leaf, ginger, rose petal, some pu-erh tuos, an oolong, and a chocolate-mint rose tea, at least (possibly some others?) I like using the plain herbals to mix into other teas as well as to crush and infuse into cocoas, and I recently ran out of a favorite hibicus/ginger tea and figured I’d just get hibiscus and ginger and steep them together for way cheaper than restocking that particular blend. I really wish I had something like this locally, since buying online always means having to get huge amounts of herbs/teas when I typically just need a few scoops like you can get here. I also loved that they clearly labeled their sources on everything, something that teashops don’t even do, leaving me having to Nancy Drew out the wholesale source that most teashops are relabeling their teas from.

KitTea Cat Cafe: This delightful cat cafe offers four unlimited green teas during your session to enjoy relaxing tea with your kitty session. During my session there was genmaicha, houjicha, kukicha, and a green oolong available. I tried kukicha for the first time and really liked it, I’ll have to get some for my home collection sometime! It was such a sweet, clean, smooth green tea. I also really liked the oolong they had. The cats were having naptime during our 4pm visit which was actually great for me, as I find sleepy kitties super relaxing; it makes pretty much all the cats really accessible to just go up to them, plop down, and pet their sleepy bodies and it’s just really calming. The mix of petting the cats and drinking tea was about to lull me into naptime! There was one kitten asleep under a table that Todd and I were petting that kept rolling over, belly up, like, “Here please! Belly access!” and the more we pet it, the louder his little purrs became. It was sooooo cute! Loved my time here!

Lupicia: Did some shopping at the Lupicia store in the San Jose Mitsuwa grocery after getting back to San Jose, where my friend Todd lives. I’ve always wanted to visit there! Since I’m shipping back my tea haul my memory might be shaky, but I believe I picked up the Imo Kuri Kabo (Halloween seasonal), Chocolate Earl Grey, Genmaicha Soybean Matcha, Rose Royale, and Caramel Rum. I also picked up a Houjicha Latte Mix from the Mitsuwa grocery section.