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This will be my last logged tea before leaving florida tomorrow for my cross-country road trip and move to Seattle, Washington!
Living in the Pacific Northwest has been my dream since visiting 2 years ago, and now it will be my home. 
My boyfriend and I are making the drive all the way from south Florida, and plan to stop in Roswell, NM, then the Grand Canyon, then California and Yosemite, and then most amazing of all, onto the Redwoods!! I will finally see them for real. I also cannot wait to see Oregon,  which I feel so connected to even though I’ve never been there.
My plan is to study the forests and determine my place in the environmental and forestry field. There is nothing I love more than the trees and forests, and I want to be near them always.

A friend of mine brought this tea over who funnily enough got it from a friend in Seattle, while the tea itself comes from Oregon. 
The magical scent of this tea alone immediately makes it the best tea ever. It is the tea to end all teas for me.
It smells like a forest, and burning a Frasier Fir candle at the same time transforms my room into one. I cannot wait to be in a real forest and to drink this tea among the trees.

What was even more special about my first time having this tea was that my favorite song ever came on my pandora while drinking it. The song is When I Grow Up by Fever Ray http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F-CpE73o2M&feature=youtube_gdata_player
When I hear it, I understand why I am alive. I know where I want to be and what I want to do. 

I can drink this tea forever.
I can’t explain the tree flavor other than its lovely, and has a lemon-like concentrated end.
Its super calming.
I also feel a special energy from this tea. Sort of like when I’m sitting on the ground leaning against a tree, and I get this incredible relaxed and happy feeling in my back. Its hard to explain.

This is literally, my Cup of Tree. 

West coast!! here I come!!!!! Woohoo!!!!

Thank you Azzrian for your awesome kindness in the holiday tea package you sent me! This was the first tea I tried.
Interestingly, it reminds me of coffee. Which is not a bad thing because I have been kind of craving coffee lately… it feels so wrong to say that haha but I really don’t need it. Its just I miss the creaminess of a cup of coffee. And that’s only because I have to put so much cream in to mask the awful taste of the coffee itself. Mostly its the amazing smell that gets me..
Anyway, this tea is pretty good with milk and sugar. If I get a stupid coffee craving, I’d go for this one. Its quite strong as well.

This one really smells like S’mores!
I put some mini mellows in my cup like a couple other steepsters did. It does make the cup just a little bit more creamy and like a hot chocolate.
The last cup of this was real murky from the all the stuff that fell through the steeper but it was the most tastiest cup for sure.
This is a perfect camping tea. It’s sweet and I like it!

Thank you Nicole for some of this tea!
It just happens to be another Ceylon I like! Adagio must have the worst Ceylon ever because for the longest time I thought I didn’t like Ceylon tea.
This one is smooth and its almost like a lighter version of my favorite Assam. No weird metallic taste like I thought was characteristic of Ceylons.

Time to try a new black tea! That always makes me happy. First time having the fancy Mariage Freres, thank you momo! Mariage Frerraaaaarre ;p
The dry leaf smells slightly fruity on top of a strong black base.
Tried to make a half pot. Good with sugar. Its just a plain, good, nice tea.
I want their new teas and awesome tins, especially the chocolate one and the macaron one. Why on earth they have to be close to $40 per 4 oz is beyond me. Unless I’m calculating the currency exchange wrong which is possible.

Finally got around to trying this sample. Sharing it with my mom and sitting outside in the patio at home, listening to birds chirp and Kaki King pandora.
Its so rare to be able to sit outside this time of year. We don’t even need ac on.
What’s awesome about our backyard is that there’s no pool, which all florida homes usually have. Instead we have hundreds of plants and flowers that my mom spends all day taking care of, and a huge black olive tree that was here long before we were. It’s like a little jungle, with lots of bamboo and even a handmade fireplace created out of coral from various beaches.

This tea is a bit light for me. I feel like I keep saying that lately.. but I just like black tea to be really flavorful. I taste the vanilla just a little bit. Will have to try again soon.

This one is new from Spice & Tea Exchange and I first tried it when a friend of mine brought it over with her cool blue cast iron teapot to brew in not too long ago. I haven’t been able to forget this tea since then and today I finally went out and bought some.
It smells incredible. Blueberry scrumptiousness. I love that there are real blueberry pieces in it and that its a Yunnan black tea.
I really like the Spice & Tea Exchange, its the only good tea store experience I can have down here.

The first pot I made is just not the same as the first time I had it… but perhaps I need more time with it. Maybe her tea pot was seasoned with this tea as she told me its been the only one brewed in it for a while.
What ended up making this tea awesome for me this time was a cranberry orange white chocolate cookie from whole foods. It was amazing and I didn’t know I even liked cranberry orange.

Anyway, I’ve been on a crazy blueberry tea kick lately, and tried some other blueberry teas not worth mentioning. I wanted to add almond milk to this but it has to defrost from being in the back of the fridge (yeah thats not normal) so I had to use regular milk instead. I also used blue agave and its much better now.
I want to figure out how to create those blueberry tea mistos I used to get at Starbucks before they took them away.

A two minute conversation I had with a stranger the other day about coffee turned into a conversation about tea. Well duh. When I mentioned how obsessed I am with loose tea, he mentioned a cafe that I’d never heard of which was not too far from me. How did I not hear about it before?! He said they have all kinds of loose tea and is also a chill place to hang out. I immediately looked the place up and the front page of their website has a pretty painting of a tree on it which made me even more excited. www.yourbigpicturecafe.com

After a visit to the everglades today where I had some VERY close encounters with some very large alligators, me and my friend went to the cafe.
Its definitely a nice place to be. It’s comfy and quiet and has a great selection of herbs and lattes but the tea selection was unfortunately disappointing. As was this tea, which was even more disappointing. I picked it thinking it’d be strong, as I needed a bold tea after biking 15 miles at the everglades preserve and was dying from tiredness.

The tea was so boring and lacking and didn’t have any flavor at all. It also tasted like it was three years old. The only good thing about this cup of tea was the awesome mug it came in. It was the steeper mug by Tea Spot http://theteaspot.com/tea-steeping-mug-steepware.html?catid=251 and it was so nifty that I wanted one but I have enough teaware right now.

The dry leaf scent is so amazing to me because its of my favorite tea cookie, Stella Doro breakfast treats. They smell so comforting and happy to me and I can’t even explain why because I’m not sure where the happy feeling comes from.
Brewed and hot, the cookie scent sort of disappears so I’m hoping it comes back through when cooled.
I’ve been waiting a long time to try this tea since I bought my samples. I waited until I could find the cookies it reminded of, and since I found them today, its time to try the tea!

It’s tea time with my boyfriend and we’re sitting upstairs at his place by the open French doors overlooking the massive oak tree out back and Fern Forest park behind it. This has to be the best view in all of south florida I’m sure, no parking lots or other houses or streets, just trees. The weather is surprisingly nice and allows us to open the doors for some fresh air. Listening to Washed Out.. pretty chilled out.

I don’t taste any chocolate in this tea and my beloved cookie taste is ever so slightly present. It goes good with the cookie though… a Stella Doro to go with some Della Terra! Try saying that 10 times fast. I already confused myself when searching for this tea to log and typed Stella Terra by mistake haha
I wish the tea was just a bit more flavorful though… I added extra leaf to begin with but maybe I’ll add more next time.

Ended up at a cafe today that I’ve never been to before and it was soo good, wish I knew about it sooner. I ordered this tea with my breakfast sandwich and it was my first time having Mighty Leaf tea.

I really liked the fancy tea bag and the little rope string and was impressed to see whole leaf tea in it. It brewed to a perfect dark shade in the mug. I added sugar in the raw and it was so delicious with my sandwich, tasting very brisk and robust! I didn’t even mind the ceylon taste to it, assuming it has ceylon.

Normally I don’t like to pair food with tea but I can tell that’s the only way I could enjoy this tea, and it reminded me how good that combination can actually be!