Something else I wanted to mention in my previous post was our stop at Starbucks. Emily is a coffee fanatic, and it doesn’t seem to matter where we are in the world – she’ll sniff out a coffee house from about 10 miles away. Back home her favourite place is Costa Coffee because (and I quote), “It’s stronger so you don’t have to ask for a triple shot in the cappuccino”.
The coffee here in the resort is just bearable, however the milk (which is called “LaLa” milk) seems to add a strange flavour to everything and makes the resulting drink taste a little ….weird (see how I cleverly steered away from saying “puke invokingly disgusting” there?).
Anyhow, we walked around Cancun and found a Starbucks. Merely opening the door brought the “real” smell of coffee to our noses. “Ohh! At last! Proper coffee!”, said Em. A bloke greeted us. He was possibly the most openly and obvious gay bloke I’ve ever seen. He had bright blue glasses, blue eyeliner and said, “Hola!” as if he was in cabaret. Oh, and please don’t flame me for that last sentence, I’m just stating what I saw.
If you’re not familiar with the Starbucks experience then I’ll explain. You order your drink, which in itself comes in around 54 combinations and sizes, then they’ll ask your name, write it on the cup and start brewing it. They do this as, when it’s busy, people ordering similar drinks won’t get mixed up and those further down the line can’t grab a cup with another same drink in.
“Como se llama?”, asked the bloke, which basically means, “What’s your name”
This bit always goes wrong for me. I’ve got a name which seems to get spelt incorrectly wherever we go in the world. I think partially it could be due to my sometimes-there-sometimes-not “Black Country” accent, however.. ..the name that came out on the cup was…
…”Ley” ?… Well, I guess either “Lee” or “Leigh” (as my name is spelt) isn’t well known here in Mexico. Things get worse though, because we had a similar issue when we were in Las Vegas (VIVAAA!!!!). I think this one was DEFINITELY due to my accent..