I took this picture while I was attending the 2008 World Tea Expo. No, it wasn't held in Paris, France. That stunning replica of the Eiffel Tower you see there is in beautiful Las Vegas, U.S.A. Oh the stories I could tell. Well, I can't really tell any of them, Vegas and all, but I can tell you all about the Tea Expo and perhaps offer a few travel tips while I'm at it.
The Expo itself was a blast. Each year it gets a little bigger, and each year Erik and I have a bit more of a clue about what the hell we are doing. Now that we actually have a strategy for our business (more on that later) we had fun trying to explain it to people, and since we're taking a different approach than most fledgling tea enterprises we were greeted with a mixture of encouraging enthusiasm and polite skepticism. I was pretty heavily caffeinated after a few hours on the show floor so I mostly relished bantering with the skeptics.
Anyway, I'll go into more detail in the ensuing posts but I will offer these two Las Vegas travel tips in the meantime: If you can avoid it, do not stay at the Luxor. Also, if you happen to be a dude and you buy one of those yard-long daiquiri cups you are almost guaranteed to have an argument with your girlfriend. We saw that story play itself out too many times not to mention it, so please, keep that in mind.
