Going too far for coffee

I woke up this morning and decided to make a 300 mile round trip just to get a cup of coffee.

In my quest to visit every Starbucks in ROI I knew that my biggest challenge was going to be getting a latte from stores outside of Dublin. The Starbucks website has two such stores listed. One in Kildare and the other in Cork.

I have already managed to visit the Kildare store. I'd rate it as one of the nicest Starbucks around. It's in a small outlet mall (with a great kids playground) just outside of the town (or city?) of Kildare, about an hour's drive from home.

As for Cork, that was going to be another matter. But today, I did it! And it was relatively simple.

Fortunately the store in Cork is at Cork International Airport, so when I saw Ryanair doing a special offer for flights I couldn't resist the opportunity for knocking this one off my list. The latte cost more than the plane tickets!

It was all a bit if a surreal experience, walking up to the barista and ordering my drink, a wry smile on my face. I was desperate to tell him what I was doing, but as it's all a bit silly I decided not too.

After the coffee I bought a sandwich and sat outside of the airport on a sunny embankment. Then I got on a plane and came home again.

Now I need to quickly finish off visiting the last couple of stores in Dublin so I can say I did it because if they open up a store in, say, Leitrim I'm not sure that I'll ever get around to completing the task.

Tim Tam Slam

I first had a Tim Tam biscuit when I was visiting my folks when they lived in Australia about 6 or 7 years ago. The Tim Tam is an Aussie institution. It's kind of like a Penguin biscuit - only not as dense. So it was on that visit that I first discovered the 'Tim Tam slam'.

About a year or so ago I noticed that you can now get Tim Tams in Ireland. (You can get them in the UK too, and in USA I think they are called 'Arnotts Originals'). Every now and then a packet finds its way home from the grocery store.

Anyway, today I favoured a cup of coffee for my afternoon break as opposed to my usual tea and I opened the biscuit tin for something suitable to dunk. Tim Tams! And I just had to do a Tim Tam slam. It was so good I felt I had to blog about it!

By now some readers may be wondering what a Tim Tam slam is. Check out this video that gives clear, step by step instructions as to what to do.

I should say that slamming with a cup of tea would work, but if you can drink coffee then the flavours work better.

Let me know if you give it a go.