Had to wait for about a thousand Chicago Bears fans to get a huge group photo before Dave and I could get this selfie. Did you know there’s an NFL game here Sunday morning? LOL.
After the morning and mid-day at the British Museum, Dave and I spent the late afternoon at high tea at the Palm Court at the The Langham, London then headed over to Harrods to see what all the fuss is about.
The tea was spectacular and there was way more food than Dave and I could even finish. The sandwiches and pastries were absolute works of art.
We took a double-decker bus from the Langham to Harrods. It was fun to sit in the front row of the top level.
Harrods is a cultural experience in and of itself. Most of the real estate in the store is dedicated to the super-high-end shopping, like Fendi furniture and Gucci baby carriages. It was certainly fun to look around and I’m grateful to the Burberry sales clerk who let me try on scarves.
We were hit with some Underground shenanigans trying to return to our AirBnB when we tried to take a route way west, thinking we’d easily connect with the line east to the nearest stop. Nope. The eastbound line we needed was closed for construction this weekend and we had to finagle another way back, costing us about 45 minutes.
It was a long day and we need to find something for Sunday that doesn’t involve so much walking. Currently looking at Thames River tour options.
The Langham Hotel claims to have invented the Afternoon High Tea (at least as an offering in a hotel). “When The Langham opened in London in 1865, it became the first hotel in the world to serve afternoon tea. Nearly 160 years later, the original Grand Hotel has launched a new afternoon tea that celebrates this unique culinary history: the tradition of taking tea in the Victorian era and The Langham as the birthplace of afternoon tea as we know it today.”
Pardon the hair. We had walked just under a mile in the rain from the Museum.The chef for the savory parts of the high tea is named Michel Roux, who had just closed a 2-Michelin-Star restaurant earlier in 2024.Since this was an early dinner for us, we figured some cocktails would be okay, right?Oops, I ate one of the pastries already. An apple tartlet.The waiter could tell that we weren’t from there. This was probably the only thing that didn’t completely blow me away, culinarily. A “Chocolate, Praline, and Pear Pudding”. The bottom is a chocolate mousse with chocolate cake/cookie crumbles. The top was a praline sauce with small pear halves. I didn’t think the three sets of flavors went so well together.Front row of the upper deck. Quite an adventure sitting there. It looks like you’re about to run over cars left and right.You can read a history of Harrod’s Department Store here. It started as a grocery store in 1849, and expanded into what’s now a super-high-end shopping experience. I think many Americans didn’t really hear of the store until Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed died in the car accident in 1997: the Fayed family owned Harrod’s at the time, it was sold to a Qatari holding company in 2010.Prada on the left? Or Gucci on the right? Each of these rooms — luxury boutiques, if you will — allows the brands to maintain their own look in displaying and marking their products.We did find the toy section, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
