Tea Time!

If you didn't already know, I love having tea time with my friends - it feels like such a civilized tradition, especially when it takes place over several hours in the middle of the day! So what better way to celebrate my favorite May bride-to-be Mercis than to have tea! It was even pretty authentic because Mercis's dad is from England and our friend Hazel from England was there with us. Hazel's accent definitely added to the experience!

We had "Full Tea" in the Bloomsbury Tea Room in Capitola, CA which is a very cute tea room decorated with lots of floral print in a not-too-kitschy way. First they let us choose our tea cups and our first tea selection. I had a lovely white tea with grapefruit. Mercis has green tea with ginkgo and citrus and Hazel has "yellow and blue" tea with chamomile and lavender.

The food was perfect for a tea party! We started with tea sandwiches with the crusts cut off and cute shapes. The fillings were: egg salad, chicken salad, tomato with pesto and cucumber. The fruit around the sandwiches was amazingly good too.

(*Update! Before we got to the sandwiches we had the most lovely creamy artichoke soup in a teacup!)

Below: Hazel drinks her tea like a proper Englishwoman. Hazel says "Mercis, you make me proud to be from England."


After sandwiches we got to make our selection of dessert teas and choose new tea cups too! I had Peach & Ginger Black Tea, Mercis chose Earl Grey Supreme and Hazel chose Decaf Earl Grey. With the dessert tea we also got heavenly delicious scones with Devonshire cream, lemon curd (yum!) and strawberry jam. Wow! So much good food. And the scones were just the interlude course - dessert was still to come!

I love this picture of Mercis because she is so happy to be eating chocolate dipped strawberries and she looks like Renee Zellweger!


Dessert after scones? It's true! Lemon pound cake, a chocolate dipped strawberry, lemon cream cake and chocolate mousse. Wow! Needless to say I was thoroughly satisfied after all the food and tea. The meal did take about 2 hours and included lots of great conversation. What a lovely way to celebrate Mercis before her wedding on Saturday! Bottom's up.


We didn't find the fancy tea hats until the end of the party but next time I will definitely wear one from the beginning. In the words of Hazel: "Cheers for that!"