Even after our late night, we were still up fairly early.  We only had a continental breakfast today in our Club Lounge as we were saving our appetites for the afternoon tea that we had booked three months ago.

After breakfast, we set out on foot to explore the Museum of London.  We hadn’t been to this museum before and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It is only fairly small, so we pretty well saw all we needed to in a couple of hours.

We then caught the tube to Bond Street Station and walked to Claridge’s.  We got there a little early, our reservation was the earliest we could make – 2:45pm.  They sat us down straight away and our tea started.  A glass of champagne was poured and then there were plates of delicious finger sandwiches.  They were incredibly moreish and were quickly polished off at which point we were offered more.  We accepted, which later proved to be a big mistake!

We chose our tea varieties, and these were poured, and beautiful warm scones were served with the hotel’s signature Marco Polo gelee.  We both managed to finish the scones and a couple of cups of tea.  Then they brought the plum pudding as we had booked on the last day of their Festive Afternoon Tea.  We immediately said that there was no way we could eat plum pudding.  As this was in a tin, they said we could take it home with us, which we did.  The final course was the cakes and desserts.  This was where we regretted the extra sandwiches, we were so full that there was no way we could do these justice.

There were tiny little chocolate mousse desserts, so we both managed these, but the other three beautifully presented cakes were a bridge too far.  The staff were happy to package them up in beautifully beribboned boxes for us to take back to our hotel. 

After finally leaving Claridge’s I realised that we weren’t too far from Selfridges, which was a shop I was interested in seeing, plus I was still trying to find a coat.  It was a beautiful store, so while I unsuccessfully looked at coats, G. spent time in the department called “Wonderland” which to him it was as he is a lover of watches and there were plenty on offer, obviously all far to expensive for us to buy, but fun to see.

We finally headed by to our hotel, still far too stuffed for dinner or to contemplate eating the cakes.  We decided to give the cakes to the staff on the reception desk, who had been so pleasant and helpful to us.  They seemed to appreciate them very much.  In the end, we popped into the hotel bar for a couple of drinks and a couple of their share plates which was all we could manage for dinner.