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Boulder, Colorado
A Small-scale City
with Big-time Charm
with Big-time Charm
By Jenn Director Knudsen
Boulder has a sister city in the Central Asian country of Tajikistan. There, its teahouses serve as community centers and often are decorated with wildly colorful Persian motifs, such as stellar, solar and floral patterns found in nature.
Between 1987 and 1990, more than 40 artisans from Tajikistan brought their wares and talents to Boulder to fashion its teahouse. As a result, the Boulder Dushanbe Tea House is replete with hand-painted and hand-carved ceilings, tables, stools, columns and exterior ceramic panels.
Open every day of the week and offering a full menu for meals and sweets throughout the day, plus – of course! – afternoon tea service and tea parties, the tea house also sells a huge variety of teas, both for sipping a' table as well as for purchasing on your way out (or back in, as the case may be).
I couldn't resist a 2-ounce lavender-colored tin filled with 100 percent natural, caffeine-free loose-leaf "Blueberry Bang" tea especially for kids. The fruity-scented tea was for my two little daughters.
There is no dearth of tea culture in Boulder. A bit outside of the town's center – about five miles from downtown and located on Sleepytime Drive – is Celestial Seasonings' headquarters, where we took a free tour of its facilities.
Offered every hour on the hour between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., Monday through Saturday, with a more-limited Sunday schedule, the tour is quite interesting. (The Web site indicates tour reservations are required only for groups of eight people or more.)
On our tour, an informative guide took us into the belly of the operation, which includes walking through an endless room filled with snaking conveyers and stacks of cardboard boxes. This is where the Hain Celestial Group's Celestial Seasonings' teas are packaged, catalogued and readied for shipping.
