Tea Time!

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After my theatre class today we walked over to the Gore Hotel for a British afternoon tea. I was really excited for this because I had been told to bring an appetite and to dress up a little for this. Anything that I can get dressed up for and have some food is an automatic win in my book. The hotel was gorgeous! It was a large, dimly lit room with elaborate wall paper and furnishings. Very comfortable velvet chairs and the table was quite beautifully decorated as well with a large cylinder candle in a large vase and white table cloths. The first thing they brought out of course was the tea and coffee. You can pour milk in the tea and sweeten it with either white or brown sugar. So of course I did all three and plenty of each. It was really good I will say, but I do like tea much more than coffee. Next they brought out two different types of scones one with raisins and the other without and both had powdered sugar on them. Along with the scones came clotted cream which was like cream cheese but much more rich and black currant jam. We were advised to save these until after we ate the sandwiches in order to become more full. The sandwiches finally arrived on a three tiered silver platter with an arrangement of rectangular shaped sandwiches. There was a large variety and they were delicious! I had egg, roast beef, salmon, cucumber and cream cheese, and tomato with fresh mozzarella. I must have had about 8 small, rectangular shaped sandwiches but those were nothing compared to the dessert. There was a variety of cookies, strawberries, eclairs, lemon meringue, cake, and chocolate frosted brownies with a vanilla drizzle over them. Everything was so delicious but my favorite was the chocolate eclairs because the chocolate was so rich and the cream softened the dark chocolate taste. The last thing to eat was the scones with clotted cream and black currant jam. The jam is a little bitter but when put with the cream its a really good combination. Although everything was really good the story behind why there is an afternoon tea is quite hilarious. People have an afternoon tea in order to have some type of food in their stomachs for the lively evening festivities they were about to undertake and didn't want to become sick before their dinner so they prepared themselves with an afternoon tea.

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