Ah, afternoon tea! It makes me want to put on a posh English accent, and perhaps ride to hounds. This is afternoon tea at the Queen Victoria Building (QVB) in downtown Sydney. Check out the chandeliers: installed in January this year, they apparently cost A$900,000. As this article says, that’s a lot of tea and scones. (BTW, contrary to the impression these photos give, the room was quite full.)
This might look like a ballroom, but it’s the tea room at the QVB.
Royal Albert china.
Afternoon tea, complete with silver stand and teapot, and china plates and cups.
Silver stand handle.
The gold rim on my cup shows signs of use!
I wish I did add sugar to my tea, just so I could use these lovely silver tongs.
Do you eat the scone first, or save it for the end?
(Apologies for the quality of these images. I didn’t have my ‘real’ camera, and was limited to what I could do in the way of lighting, focus, and processing.)
Pics by Kaz 
You should probably apologise MORE, Elizabeth ! – I mean, Devon arvo tea without your best canera equipment ? Good heavens, woman !
I have been given a thermal cooker for my birthday, which they tell me makes terrific scones: I will be testing this thesis on the weekend !! 🙂
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True, it was unforgivably slack of me to prioritise weight of handbag over quality of resultant photo.
Birthday, huh? I had this tea yesterday (16 July) on MY birthday! Is yours near then?
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8 days prior, m’dear ! 😀
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Happy belated birthday M-R – hope the scone baking goes well 🙂
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Keep yer fingers crossed, Jude ! 😎
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If nothing else, you can huddle near the thermal cooker to stay warm this weekend!
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Made me giggle, you idiot woman !
http://www.dreampot.com.au/
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Hmm, given all those layers of cooker insulation you might need a cardie, after all. Do you have to use this thing on your balcony? It looks more like a cooker for the great outdoors than the domestic kitchen.
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I’ve been searching for something to help me save use of my gas oven, Elizabeth, now that gas prices have risen by at least a third and will continue to rise. I looked first at benchtop ovens )http://www.choice.com.au/reviews-and-tests/household/kitchen/ovens-and-cooktops/benchtop-ovens.aspx) and then, having been discouraged, at convection microwaves (http://www.choice.com.au/reviews-and-tests/household/kitchen/microwaves/combination-microwave-ovens-review-and-compare.aspx) and neither was tempting. Then by sheer coincidence a nice woman who read something I commented after a article in “The Conversation”mentioned thermal cookers. After that, it was just a matter of buying one, and that was followed by my dear and very old friends down in Geelong paying for it as a birthday present !
I found room in a kitchen cupboard for it, and now have to get rid of several things I never use …
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I hope it does the trick! Happy scone baking.
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It looks very fine and posh… just right to celebrates one’s __ __ birthday.
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You would have enjoyed it!
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Cucumber sandwiches, salmon sandwiches? And there really should be more cakes! Terribly quaint though – and so much more appealing when this takes place outside of England 🙂 And what a lovely way to celebrate a birthday! Although I detest tea ;(
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I think one sandwich was cucumber and the other cheese (vegetarian option). Plus two small warm savoury tartlets. As for cakes, I think there were five, including a macaron, which I left, forlorn and adrift on an empty three-tiered silver stand. I detest macarons as much as you detest tea. 😉
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Oh, and what did you put on the scone first? Cream or jam?
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I always put the jam on first, cuz I find that it’s harder to spread jam over cream than vice versa. Weighty issues, indeed. But since I don’t take milk in my tea, I am spared the milk first/milk last conundrum!
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That’s the Cornish way, but actually if you use really thick (i.e. clotted cream) it makes the taste more appealing to put the jam on top 😉
Try it next time!
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