My Starbucks City Mugs

I have this odd habit of purchasing ceramic city mugs from Starbucks during my travels. Many major cities have customized mugs featuring that city’s skyline or significant monuments and noteworthy places, and to me it’s a bit of a game to collect as many as possible. I have even had dreams of mugs at times. Very odd. It's nice to see that I'm not the most psycho person about this.

Many of my friends and old co-workers are aware of this strange obsession, and have fueled my fire by purchasing mugs for me during their travels. Mike the Architect bought me mugs from China (and his mom even bought me a Cleveland mug), Jamen bought me a mug from Cancun, my old co-workers even chipped in – Stuart bought me Frankfurt and Australia, Tim bought a mug from Thailand, my old boss Allen was great in buying me mugs from Kuwait and some other exotic locales. My companion-in-mug Elliott (another old co-worker) bought the most mugs for me…..and vice versa. We often traveled to different cities for work, and bought each other mugs whenever we saw new ones that we knew the other did not have. I got him doing the mug thing until his new wife put an end to the insanity.

Ever few years, they release a new style of mug – the perfect way to rope people like me in to buying multiple mugs for the same cities. For example, I have 4 different Boston mugs. My favorite is their “art deco” one which included only a few cities in the series.

Every so often, I will find an out of place mug – i.e. a city mug for a city in which I’m not. Once in Philadelphia, I found a New Orleans mug (which I mistakenly put into my checked luggage to have US Airways break – never did that again!). In Providence, I found a Cleveland mug. And at Logan’s Terminal A Starbucks this week, I found a Niagara Falls mug – probably my best “fish out of water” mug score thus far, as I don’t plan to be in Niagara Falls any time soon.

I think Niagara Falls is mug #61. I’ll have to do a mugcount at some point.

Last summer, I had a MAJOR mug misstep. En route to Croatia last summer, I saw a Starbucks at Gatwick that had multiple mugs from places throughout the UK and Ireland – a Scotland mug, a London mug, an England mug, a Dublin mug, etc., . Probably 6 different ones in total. I figured I would purchase the mug bounty on my way back from Croatia, as to not be on vacation and on the buses that travel Croatia’s coastline with a half-dozen ceramic mugs in tow.

Well, I should have thought that with my different flight routing and carriers, I would not be passing through the same terminals going in each direction. Headed there, I flew Newark to London-Gatwick (where Continental has quite a large operation), then connected to a British Airways flight to Split, Croatia. Coming back, it was BA from Dubrovnik, Croatia to Gatwick, and Gatwick to Cleveland to Newark (reward ticket, cheaper-mileage first class the whole was if I did the Cleveland thing, so why not?) The problem is the whole International customs / immigration thing. When flying between different countries, the connecting procedure is not as simple as deplaning and walking to the next gate. I should have figured that their immigration area would not spit me back into the general concourse, but instead direct me through a labyrinth-like maze that bypassed the Starbucks I saw on the way through the first time.

Total missed opportunity. Total bummer.