Afternoon tea and a day trip to Windsor

One of the great things about living in London is that beautiful places like Windsor are only 30 minutes away. So on Saturday I made my way to Paddington, hopped on a train and met up with 2 fellow bloggers (the lovely Aysha and Safira) for afternoon tea, shopping and of course plenty of touristy photos:

Windsor castle

Windsor - I love this painted phone box

 Afternoon tea at The Harte and Garter

 Cream then jam or jam then cream?

(I'm firmly in the cream then jam camp)

 Afternoon tea - our selection of delicious cakes and brownies

For lunch we opted for afternoon tea at The Harte and Garter hotel - seeing as Windsor is a town so steeped in history and tradition it seemed only right to go for something so quintessentially English. Although I don't get the chance to go very often, afternoon tea is one of my favourite treats, think warm comforting cups of milky tea, crustless finger sandwiches, raisin scones with clotted cream and jam, and to finish off a plate of deliciously sweet cakes and brownies.

For some reason they kept overfilling our tea pots which made for a rather messy table, but otherwise it was a really enjoyable meal. The sandwiches are always my favourite part of afternoon tea, and on this occasion they certainly didn't disappoint. We had a selection of smoked salmon with cream cheese, thick cut ham and mustard, egg mayonnaise and of course the classic English cucumber. They were kind enough to give us a couple of extra smoked salmon sandwiches too, which went down a real treat.

 Windsor shopping centre

Windsor & Eton train station

Sadly most of the shops had shut by the time we finished catching up, but with historic buildings and St George's flags up everywhere it was still such a pretty place to walk around. All too soon though, it was time to catch the train back home but all in all it was a really lovely day out. If you're ever looking for a day trip somewhere close to London then I'd definitely recommend Windsor and although we didn't go on this occasion the castle would be really nice in the summer too.

Have you ever been to Windsor? What's your favourite place for afternoon tea?