I thrive on caffeine. So working on a story where I experienced the best coffee in Italy, tea in India, and chocolate wherever I traveled was fantastic. I spent three days in Rome and had one of the best cappuccinos ever. The ingredients were the key to it being so good: They used the best coffee and milk. I realized that tasting coffee, tea, and chocolate is like tasting wine, and soon I could recognize the subtle differences.
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This story ruined coffee for me for life. It was really hard coming back to coffee in the United States after having the best. I was in a Starbucks in Arizona and got this coffee that tasted like it had cigarettes floating around in it, and the milk was like foam rubber. So now when I'm on the road, I always ask for tea. It's a lot harder to screw up a tea bag.
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Tea has become hip again in London. So I visited Sketch, one of the hippest restaurants in the city. They have a tearoom, but it's almost impossible to get a reservation because rock stars like Mick Jagger and Madonna are eating there. Before I started taking pictures, I asked everyone in the room if it was OK. One guy told me I could take a picture of a rock star if I wanted to. Well, that guy was Adam Ant, a British rock star from the '80s. He told me he loves National Geographic, subscribes to it, and that I could put that in my story. I thought that was really wild.
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