So the celebrations began on the Wednesday, my Mum's birthday, bright and early to open lots of lovely presents including a gorgeous green Roberts radio which is actually making me pretty green with envy myself! My sister and I decided to treat her to a lovely memorable birthday day out and so I made a little ticket to slip into her card to tell her what her day will entail and as a nice little keepsake to remember the day. We hopped on the train to London nice and early to make the most of the day and swiftly made our way to the lovely Kew Gardens! We had never visited Kew as a place anyway, and it had such a quaint little village feel to it, we will definitely be returning another day just for a little meander. Once inside Kew Gardens, we grabbed a map and navigated ourselves round, looking in all the amazing victorian greenhouses that had been there so many years, filled with incredible plants you would struggle to see anywhere else in England. They everything from desert plants, to trees found in the tropics. My favourite would have to be the pretty little observatory that had a big pond in the middle, with huge lily pads that lay upon it, and different waterlilies that came out at different times of night and day. After having a good look round, we found our way to the gift shop, which was always inevitable and headed on our way to a well earned afternoon tea.
After much searching, myself and my sister had managed to find an hotel that served afternoon tea where we felt that it wasn't too ridiculously priced yet felt special, with good service and good reviews. We had found some reviews at places such as the Ritz people had felt pressured to leave after about an hour and half and we felt at £60 per person, that was not really the experience we were hoping for. That's when we stumbled across The Chesterfield Hotel in Mayfair on a Daily Telegraph review article and after researching a little more we felt this fitted the bill just right.
Once we arrived at the hotel we were quickly seated and a lovely waiter came to ask us what teas we would like to order. I don't usually like tea, but I tried out a Peach Oolong Tea which turned out to be really nice actually! My sister hands down had the coolest tea though, it was a flower infused green tea where they had taken the bud of a flower and stitch it together so that when it was placed in hot water it would open up to form a pretty little flower!
Swiftly after, our three tier afternoon tea came out with a delicious selection of sandwiches, cakes and scones. All the sandwiches tasted amazing, there was egg mayo on a basil bread, salmon and cream cheese, ham and mustard, cucumber and my ultimate favourite, chicken mayo on a bread that had been encrusted round the edges with chopped almonds, absolutely delicious. After a fair few repeats of that course from the astounded waiter who couldn't believe we could eat so much we then moved onto the cakes. There was an absolute array of cakes, including eclairs, cherry cupcakes, cheesecake and the best in my opinion, a strawberry tart. I literally can't begin to explain how amazing the tart was, everything was to fresh and made to an absolute T to culminate in making something that was literally melt in the mouth amazing. After numerous cakes we then had the scones with jam and clotted cream which were divine. The staff were amazingly attentive and were more than happy to keep topping up our plates until we were just about ready to roll out the door. Almost. I had mentioned to them that it was two big birthdays and so at the end of the meal the waiters came out with candle lit cupcakes for both my Mum and my Sister with Happy Birthday prettily written around the edge of the plate, singing happy birthday. It was a lovely special moment and really topped off a really great day. Obviously before we left, my sister and I had to raid the pick and mix table for some tasty treats for on the way home, you know, just in case we got hungry again...
