Travel Disasters; Chapter 4 – a nice cup of tea …

Some things are just different in Italy … our Tuscan villa was exceptionally well appointed, however the shower was just the hose type arrangement connected to the taps of the bath, so one had to be creative about bathing.  Because the Italians only drink espresso coffee that you can stand your spoon up in, they don’t seem to use electric kettles, so to make tea, we had to boil water on the stove.  We drink a lot of tea and soon got tired of that, so we bought an electric kettle.  Yay … life is back to normal and we’ve had lots of cups of nice tea.  Today we packed up to move camp – while I was attending to the suitcases, Linz packed up our food supplies, odds and ends, and the kettle.   After a long day on the road, half of it in the rain, and arriving at a new location after dark, we got to our hotel room and I filled our lovely kettle (through the spout, without opening the lid) to make a nice well deserved cuppa.   I caught a slight whiff of soap and thought “hmmm Linz must have put the kettle in the same bag as the washing powder”.  Jug boiled, tea made, ahhhhh nice and hot, and tastes full bodied and delicious.  It was soooooo good that Linz decided to make the second cuppa – he opened the lid of the kettle to refill it, and hauled out of it ….. wait for it ………. my face cloth, my shower cap, and our bath sponge (hence the soap smell).  All had been nicely boiled in the kettle and the liquid poured over our tea bags creating a whole new way of taking your daily cuppa.   Apparently Linz thought it was a great space saving idea to stuff the toiletries in the jug when he packed up.  Isn’t that just a man’s thought pattern for you!   It’s funny now as I write it, but it sure wasn’t funny at the time !!!!!!!!!  Our standard question now is “would you like your tea with a bit of shower cap, or just a lump of bath sponge???”