We English like our cuppa

Our travelling companions new to cruising, have asked whether they will be able to get their pre breakfast tea/coffee whilst on board. I've said they can go up to cafe and get their drinks there to take back to cabin.

Am I correct? We will be on Star out of Venice in September.

Does anyone know whether they have English Breakfast tea available?

Thanks :cool:

You can get tea in the buffet, and some other places.

You may want to take along some of your own teabags though. Often there is some PG tea in the buffet, but if not then the standard tea is apparently very flavourless (so my wife says, I think that's the case for all tea). My wife always takes along a bags for a couple of cups a day.

You can also get coffee in the same places. I think it's ok, although some people say they don't like it. You can get better coffee in the atrium cafe, but it's an extra charge.

If you're fussy about tea then bring bags- Yorkshire tea it ain't! My husband used 2 ncl teabags at once and even then it wasn't great. He quite liked the range of fruit teas though. I'm a coffee drinker and found the buffet coffee just about drinkable.

Room service in morning is free for continental breakfast - water probably won't arrive hot enough for you though. That's one of the reasons I like the studios - I can just pop in & grab hot water. I also bring my preferred tea with me wherever just in case but Ncl usually has a good selection.

The only way to get a decent cup of tea on any cruise line that isn't British is to bring your own teabags and make it yourself in the buffet. You can get a semi-decent coffee free from room service in the morning.

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Now I know I will be shouted at and told that we shouldn't be doing this but we always pack a travel Kettle, take our own tea bags and borrow cups from the Buffet and make our own morning cuppa, we have done this on NCL, RCI and Celebrity and it's never been a problem in around 20 cruises.

When we were on epic I took my own Yorkshire tea bags because was fed up with dishwater tea! We had a mini coffee maker in the cabin which you can fill and get hot water through which worked pretty well, don't know if they have them in cabins on the star? As it was an epic Europe cruise there were quite a few brits and if I took the tea bags to the buffet they were always asking me where I got them from! I was dishing them out like smarties! Lol

I have found English Breakfast and Earl Grey in the past, but it is spotty. (Not the Tea :) Better bring your own.

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OK I give up. What is a cuppa?

A cup of tea

Balcony cabins on the Star should have a small coffee maker but to my mind the water doesn't get hot enough for tea.

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Balcony cabins on the Star should have a small coffee maker but to my mind the water doesn't get hot enough for tea.

 

 

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Also the water going through those things always tastes of coffee, ugh!

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We were on the star this month, there was a coffee maker in the room so we went to the buffet if we wanted tea. A range was available but if they like particular ones, take tea bags with you.

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I usually take PG with me. However if you've ever seen waiters in the dining room offering guests something from a posh looking wooden box, that usually has reasonable individually wrapped English Breakfast in it. I think they changed the brand a year or so ago.

The wooden boxes are often in the buffet too, but not always by every machine.

Usually, in my experience, they have PG in them in the buffet.

The tea is verrrry weak. No tea flavour, just coloured water. Bring your own if you enjoy nice tea. [emoji4]

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It is too hard to type that out? LOL

Cuppa : just normal English language colloquial usage, cf OED.

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It is too hard to type that out? LOL

Is it too hard to figure out or look up? LOL

Now I know I will be shouted at and told that we shouldn't be doing this but we always pack a travel Kettle, take our own tea bags and borrow cups from the Buffet and make our own morning cuppa, we have done this on NCL, RCI and Celebrity and it's never been a problem in around 20 cruises.

You can also get the small cartons of milk they have by the cereals at breakfast and keep it in your cabin fridge.

I drink English breakfast tea all day. If you order hot water from room service they usually bring it in a

carafe that has had coffee in it at one time and it tastes like it. Your best bet is to go to the buffet and find the hot water and put tea bags you brought with you in a ceramic mug and then fill with water. They have fancier teas from time to time than just their generic tea but you just can't count on it.

Never have watched the "British Comedies" on PBS....you learn a lot of their sayings from those shows!

The tea is weak because they don't use boiling water....by the time the water gets to you, with the teabag secure in it's wrapper, the water is too cool to make good tea. Why they can't put the teabag in the container, and THEN add the boiling water is beyond me....so simple, yet it's hard for them, for some reason.

The tea is weak because they don't use boiling water....by the time the water gets to you, with the teabag secure in it's wrapper, the water is too cool to make good tea. Why they can't put the teabag in the container, and THEN add the boiling water is beyond me....so simple, yet it's hard for them, for some reason.

When discussing the quality of the tea that NCL provide, many of us are talking about tea made my the person themselves at the buffet.

Using exactly the same materials except for either NCL supplied tea bags or ones my wife brings, with exactly the same water etc, the NCL one apparently has very little taste in comparison.

I've got no opinion on it myself, but any difference there is in that situation is nothing to do with how it is prepared.

Actually, thinking about it, I do have a bit of an opinion. Normal tea has a vague taste to me. NCL tea tastes like hot water. I'm no tea expert though. I don't particularly like my cuppa.

I am not a hot tea person myself, but tea is very important to my DW. She probably drinks 6 to 10 cups per day. She is not a "snob" but can be fickle. Tea wise, she only wants "regular" black tea. Tetley, Lipton, or some kind of English Breakfast Tea will suit her just fine. PG or Bigelow black tea will also make her very happy. She does not drink Earl Grey and any flavored or herbal teas. Like some others have said, she wants her water as hot as possible. Room service tea just won't cut it for her because the water is not hot enough. Therefore, she gets her tea from the buffet to get the water direct from the hot water dispensers. She uses a very small amount of skim milk. If skim is not available in the milk pitchers, she will use a carton of skim and put the remainder in the room refrigerator for future use. She has always been satisfied with the tea offerings in the buffet that I described. That includes past cruises on NCL.

We will be spending 14 days on BA and since happy wife = happy life, I have to ask these questions, so I can decide about smuggling tea bags onboard.

1. What type of tea is available? In the buffet, MDR, and specialty restaurants?

2. Is there skim (nonfat) milk available for tea? (If not, she will use a smaller quantity of 1% milk)

3. Since they don't allow any carry on beverages, will you get hassled about a box of 100 teabags?

I am not a hot tea person myself, but tea is very important to my DW. She probably drinks 6 to 10 cups per day. She is not a "snob" but can be fickle. Tea wise, she only wants "regular" black tea. Tetley, Lipton, or some kind of English Breakfast Tea will suit her just fine. PG or Bigelow black tea will also make her very happy. She does not drink Earl Grey and any flavored or herbal teas. Like some others have said, she wants her water as hot as possible. Room service tea just won't cut it for her because the water is not hot enough. Therefore, she gets her tea from the buffet to get the water direct from the hot water dispensers. She uses a very small amount of skim milk. If skim is not available in the milk pitchers, she will use a carton of skim and put the remainder in the room refrigerator for future use. She has always been satisfied with the tea offerings in the buffet that I described. That includes past cruises on NCL.

 

We will be spending 14 days on BA and since happy wife = happy life, I have to ask these questions, so I can decide about smuggling tea bags onboard.

 

1. What type of tea is available? In the buffet, MDR, and specialty restaurants?

2. Is there skim (nonfat) milk available for tea? (If not, she will use a smaller quantity of 1% milk)

3. Since they don't allow any carry on beverages, will you get hassled about a box of 100 teabags?

She should definitely find Lipton on board. If no milk right by the hot water there should be the small cartons available. I don't use milk so I am not sure as to location. No problem bringing all the tea bags onboard.