Today I’m telling you one of my most embarrassing travel stories, in the hope that it helps you avoid doing something that, eight years later, still makes me cringe hard enough to make my face hurt.
Let’s be clear here. I’m not doing this as an attempt at that kind of entertaining self-humiliation in service of a good story that Bill Bryson is such a master of. Well – not totally, anyway. There’s also a public service announcement in here as well, and an important one, because maybe you’re spending some time in Spain next year, maybe on Wheel & Anchor’s Andalusian Dreams adventure. Or maybe you’ll be elsewhere in Europe, because the following potential horror-story doesn’t just apply to Spain…
In which case: we really need to talk about how you’ll make a hot beverage.
The scene is an Airbnb in Cádiz, in late 2016. My partner M. and I have just arrived to drop our bags off, and we want to get out and see the city. There’s still enough of the daylight left to explore this strikingly handsome town, on its peninsula so tenuously connected to the mainland that it’s essentially an island.
To describe Cádiz as “historic” is to stretch the word to breaking-point: it’s one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the whole of Europe. The Phoenicians founded it in 1100 BC (naming it “Gadir”) and for most of the last 3,000 years it was one of the great trading ports of the world. Ah, what a place, with its romantic architecture and huge, time-ravaged city walls. We can’t wait to see what it has to offer us.
But first, I need a cup of tea. Of course I do: I’m English. The human body may be 70% water, but the English heart and soul is mostly tea. I can’t go exploring without popping the kettle on and making a brew, I just can’t. Sorry.
M. completely understands, or at least decides to humour me – so she heads out to get a few things from the little shop we passed on the street, while I approach our host (we’re renting a room, not the whole apartment) and ask if I could make a cuppa.
Of course, our host says. I can have full use of the kitchen! Go nuts! I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
It doesn’t even occur to me that I’m anything less than experienced and trustworthy. For the last few months, M and I have been working our way across Spain in a series of rentals and house-stays with friends. I know how all this works – and one thing has been more or less a constant: the classic Spanish hot-water kettle in solid stainless steel, designed to be placed directly on the heat.
This kind of kettle isn’t the usual thing back home in the UK these days, but I used versions of them all the time when I was an archaeologist on excavations: you fill the kettle with water, chuck a handful of teabags in, pop it atop the lit burner of a gas stove for maybe quarter of an hour, and hey presto! – a field of happy archaeologists, all tea’d up. The version of it here in Spain has worked similarly, except sometimes using the glowing ring of an electric stove.
I grab the host’s kettle, fill it with water, pop it on her very expensive-looking stove top with its glittering crystal surface, and turn up the heat – then I find the mugs, put a couple of teabags in them and wait for the water to boil.
Then I become aware of the smell.
It’s the reek of sun-scorched plastic on a hot summer’s day – then it intensifies into the acrid smell of a tire-fire. Is a neighbour’s place going up? These third-floor apartments are worryingly crammed together – what are the fire regulations like in this city? Except, wait, the windows are closed right now, so that can’t be…
And then I notice I can’t see out of those windows – because of the smoke that’s inside the kitchen.
Here’s what I’d done, if you haven’t guessed by now. I’d taken my host’s brand new Russell Hobbs electric kettle with its black moulded-plastic bottom, I’d put it on her brand new crystal-top hob, and then I’d applied heat until the result was a bubbling, melted disaster of an ex-kettle and a whole apartment filled with black smoke.
For the next couple of truly terrifying hours, filled with some of the most embarrassing conversations of my entire life (both with our host and with M when she returned and discovered the sheer scale of my abominable stupidity), I become convinced I needed to pay our host:
(a) £25 for a new kettle, and
(b) at least £1,500 for a new hob top.
I could pay the former, but as a near-broke travel writer, I had no chance at fulfilling the latter – so, with a soapy cloth and a lot of faith in modern stove surfaces, I do my very best to clean the offending melted plastic slag off the glass without scratching it…
The good news: it came up a treat. Not a trace left! (Modern stove-tops are amazing.)
The bad news is that I will never recover from all this. It’s left me utterly paranoid about kettles in the homes of strangers – and I usually get M. to double-check that I’m not about to try to burn the place down. Kettles terrify me. I’m officially a kettlephobe. That’s just who I am now, and I’ve grown to accept it.
So that’s my warning to you – with the caveat that while I know you’re not as unthinkingly daft as I am, when you’re tired after a long day’s travelling, pretty much anything can happen. Let’s hope this isn’t included, eh?
Join Wheel & Anchor on a 15-day adventure next year exploring Andalusia – beginning in Madrid, spending three nights in Seville, diving into the cultural richness of Córdoba for four nights, then spending six extended nights in Malaga. Conclude the expedition with a final night in Madrid, cherishing memories of a diverse exploration through Andalusia’s heart. Full kettle training on request. Get all the details here.