Tea at the Ritz

Here is the Palm Court at the Ritz Hotel, Piccadilly London. This is where afternoon tea is served and where myself and 'the girls' went for our Summer outing. It is ridiculously extravagant and expensive but nowhere does afternoon tea like The Ritz.

You begin by choosing which tea you would like from a wide range on offer. We all chose different teas hence the number of tea pots on the table. For those of you who enjoy tea here is the choice we were given: Ritz Royal English, Darjeeling first flush, Assam Leaf, Ceylon orange pekoe, Russian Caravan, Camomile flowers, Lemon Verbena, Earl Grey, Oolong Formosa, Jasmine with flowers, Rose congou, Rooibos red, Chun Mee, Moroccan mint and one or two others.

 On the cake stand you can see the sandwiches on the second layer and the small cakes and pastries above. The sandwiches had no crusts and were elegantly cut.  You could eat as many as you wanted as they were replenished before we had finished eating them all.

After demolishing the sandwiches we were served with warmed fruit and plain scones with raspberry jam and clotted cream.

More pots of tea arrived. We ordered different varieties to go with the pastries this time. Wouldn't like to be the person responsible for polishing  all these silver teapots.

Just when we thought we had finished more cake was brought to the table. I would have refused but it sticky toffee pudding cake and I thought it would be rude to say no.

Not being able to eat another mouthful we left our table to be cleared, cleaned and reset ready for the next indulgent group.