An Afternoon at British High Tea

I am back in London after an epic weekend away in the Caribbean and I am extremely thankful that yesterday was a bank holiday in England as I needed the day to get readjusted. But now that I am back I wanted to share a new post from my new hometown.  When my friend Kitty was in town two weeks ago I wanted to give her a true British experience so we went to High Tea. What exactly is high tea?  Afternoon tea but done in a very fancy way.  We made reservations and weaved our way through the London Marathon to The Lounge at the Royal Horseguards Hotel which was set up beautifully for the occasion.  

The Royal Horseguards has two types of tea – regular and celebratory and not one to skimp, we went for the celebratory which meant we started with a glass of Taittinger Champagne.  Our other drink, as the name suggests, was tea and since we each got our own pot of tea to keep with the  quintessentially British tradition we opted for Earl Grey and English Breakfast as our two options. 

What took over the table though was the delicious food. A three tier trey arrived including”traditional and contemporary selection of elegant finger sandwiches” arrived which included chicken, roasted ham, smoked salmon, cucumber / cream cheese and more.  In addition to the finger sandwiches there were also warm freshly baked fruit and plain scones, homemade fruit preserve and Cornish clotted cream which may have been our favorite.  And then the third tier had delicious handmade cake and delicate pastries that we could not quite figure out but were incredibly tasty none the less. If you want to see the details of all of the food you can see them here on the menu! 

We lounged over our bubbles, tea, and nibbles spending almost two hours at The Royal Horseguards before heading off to Harrods for a bit of shopping (where I got these shoes) and made sure to walk off all of the delicious nibbles! 

Have you ever been to afternoon tea?