Afternoon Tea & Stonehenge

So I'm backtracking a little bit since I didn't post about this before we left for Scotland. 

We had a fabulous last day in London. I'm not going to lie, by the time Tuesday came around I was exhausted and part of my thought... "you know what, maybe we don't need to go out to Stonehenge." But I am so glad that I sucked it up and charged forth. 

We started out the morning by checking out the Hummingbird Bakery that Catherine told us about. She said they had world famous cupcakes... And who can turn that down?! We took the tube from Lancaster Gate (about a 5 minute walk from our hotel room) to Notting Hill Gate, which is close to Portabello Road. From there, we walked north along Portabello Road (where we walked around the market on our first day in London) up to the bakery. The exterior had a hummingbird emblazoned on the outside, which made it easy to identify from afar. We bought two cupcakes: carrot cake and hummingbird (hello, we had to get the one that the bakery was named after!). We also got a fun surprise for Catherine (now won't this make her intrigued?). We saved those cupcakes for our train ride to Edinburgh the next day and they were delicious!! Catherine would have been in love. 

(Outside of the bakery, there was the tiniest, most adorable Volks Wagon Beatle. I have a picture of me standing behind it and it only comes up to my chest. How does anyone even fit in that car!? Teeny tiny!) 

From there, we returned to the hotel to quickly drop off the cupcakes and headed to the nearby Hilton Hotel where we had reservations for Afternoon Tea. Tea was something we had on our 'must-do' list while in England. How can you visit and not have tea? When we arrived, we got our choices of tea. I kept it pretty simple with English breakfast tea and my mom was a little bit more adventurous by ordering mint tea. They brought out two little teapots, one for each of us, with a tea bag steeping. After letting it steep a while, we removed the tea bags and began drinking the tea. (I actually had to ask the waiter to bring me a different tea pot because I couldn't remove the lid to take out the tea bag and the tea had gotten very strong. Oops!) It was yummy! Mom really enjoyed her mint tea, although she was a little skeptical when she took her first whiff. 

While we were sipping tea, they brought out a three-tiered server with sandwiches, scones and sweets. The sandwiches were tiny triangle finger sandwiches and included egg salad, ham and cheese, salmon, prawn, cucumber and cream cheese, and tomato. 

After finishing the savouries, we moved on to the scones, which were served with jam and clotted cream. That was the first time that I'd had clotted cream and I honestly didn't know what the difference was between that and butter... So I googled. From what I read, they seem relatively similar, but clotted cream is heated when made, while butter is not heated and churned. The scones were delicious as well. 

From there, we moved on to the "dessert plate." And let me just say, yum! There were several little one-bite desserts, including a mini eclaire, a macaroon, and a few little cake bites. The pictures just don't do these little guys justice. They were good! 

Needless to say, we left happy and thoroughly enjoyed our first afternoon tea experience!

________________________________________________________________________________________

Shortly following finishing tea, we hopped on a train from Waterloo Station out to Salsbury, which is the nearest train station to Stonehenge. Salsbury is a very cute town and reminded us both of our visit to Rothenburg in Germany. Unfortunately, we didn't get time to explore the little city besides listening to the recordings on the tour bus that drives out to Stonehenge. 

We hopped on a bus outside of Salsbury train station that drove us along the beautiful, sheep-spotted countryside out to Stonehenge. As we drew near, we could see the stones rise above the hills and it was awe inspiring. We're we really seeing this? 

The information center provided some history regarding the site. So much mystery and awe surrounds the site and it was thrilling to both learn more about it and see it in person. I had no idea that work began on the site more than 5,000 years ago with the digging of a great ditch and building up of the ground on which the stones are placed. The stones are brought from great distances away, which always begs the question how they did it without modern technology. I am always amazed by ancient construction such as this and the Egyptian pyramids. They built huge, amazing things with just man power. 

My first reaction to the site was "huh, I thought it would be bigger...", but I really think that is because there is nothing close to the stones that shows a scale of how large they are. Ropes also keep visitors pretty far back, which makes gauging the size difficult. 

Below is a photo of me with a life-size recreation of one of the largest stones at Stonehenge,

There were a lot of people out there wandering about, but we did manage to get some good photos. Overall, we were really glad that we went!

After wrapping up our tour of Stonehenge, we returned to London on the train and made out way back to the hotel on the tube. We packed up on luggage and out hotel room and prepped for leaving for Scotland in the morning.