Monday, October 12, 2009

Hopetoun House Tea

Hopetoun House TeaWhen planning our trip, we tried to find things to do that we just can’t do here in Canada. Hence when we found the Hopetoun House online that offered an afternoon tea, we couldn’t resist. The Hopetoun House is a massive country estate 30 minutes outside of Edinburgh (if your wife and sister-in-law can read a map properly) on the Firth of Forth built in the 1700’s. Although we didn’t find much information online about their tea, we thought we couldn’t pass up the opportunity of a traditional tea and thought just visiting the estate would be a guaranteed fun excursion.

The property is definitely majestic, with old trees, massive lawn and views of the water. The estate was pristine and had much of the original carpets and furniture throughout. Combining this setting with a classic afternoon tea made this one the most enjoyable moments of the trip. Scone with Coddled Cream & JamWe had pre-ordered the tea for 4 adults and the staff was more than willing to make something up for the kids. Within minutes of sitting down, out came a beautiful 3 tiered tray of salmon, cucumber and ham sandwiches, coddled cream, preserves, butter and some of the best pastries I have ever had. The brownies were moist and fluffy, the scones were amazing with the coddled cream and preserves and the lemon bar was an excellent “lighter” choice. I had to try them all of course!

I truly felt as if the Hopetoun House tea was one of those experiences you just Jack & Ben exploring Hopetoun groundscan’t replicate at home and was one of the special moments of the trip that we would highly recommend. I am not sure if it makes a big difference, but I should mentioned we were there on the last day of the year that it was open so there were no crowds; hence it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves!


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