Saturday morning started early, or at least it did for one of us. M was up at 6:00am to go rowing, while I stayed snuggled up in a lovely warm bed- nothing makes you appreciate a bed more than the thought of having to leave it!
Considerably later I arose to the wonderful smell of sizzling sausages and we got ready to start day two of our celebratory weekend.
Now I'm going to let you into a secret. There's an amazing site called
'Living Social' which is great when you want to find somewhere special to go but don't quite fancy the huge price tags which can accompany it. On this site you can buy vouchers for anything from restaurant deals to spa visits or even various workshops and I love it! Anyway, this is where I sourced our next destination from: we were off to the
Crazy Bear, Fitzrovia for the Mad Hatter's afternoon tea!
The Crazy Bear was just
so cool! The decor was really cozy but lavish, with massive mirrors everywhere which befuddled your brain. We were in the upstairs restaurant, but on a quick peak downstairs, the bar was equally spectacular and could have easily been something straight out of Tim Burton's 'Alice in Wonderland.'
Our afternoon tea was far from traditional. Firstly, the raspberry cocktails arrived in glass tea pots with a little churn of fresh cream on the side, then our dim sum. I was pleasantly surprised by just how much we were given- the waiter had to do two trips to deliver all the little boxes to our table! It was all just so mouth wateringly good! M and I could barely decide which were our favourite pieces by the end of meal (although we both thought that the dipping sauce, which was similar to, but surely wasn't just soy, was delicious), but in the end we settled on what has been in the past our favourite. Venison puffs. I cannot describe how good these are! I've only ever had the chance to eat them twice in my life, but each time I've wanted a hundred more. The rich, saucy meat combined with the sweet pastry makes you reach for the second before you've even finished the first. (Okay okay, M was a bit more restrained. But they were SO good so can you blame me?!)
We finished off our afternoon tea with some actual tea. (Mine was 'whole rose and china black' and M's was 'Jasmine pearls'.) More transparent tea pots and interesting tealeaves later, it was time for a quite visit to check out the bathrooms. These are a little on the confusing side. I asked a waitress where they were and was left pushing on a mirror for a good few seconds before I decided to try the wall next to it. It swung around and I entered what could only be described as a mirrored underwater grotto. The whole room seemed to glow. The sink was a long trough with water gushing down from above. This connected through to the men's, which gave me rather a shock when a pair of hands came through from the other side- it took me a few seconds to work out that they weren't just another reflection! M also met a rather confused man on his visit, who confided that it was in fact his second attempt at finding the right wall to push as he hadn't found it the first time! Anyway, I loved them and would love to recreate something similar in my house in the future!
We both really enjoyed the Crazy Bear- the food was excellent, the venue strangely exciting and the staff polite and efficient- I thoroughly enjoyed myself and would definitely recommend a visit!
After we were stuffed full, we felt prepared to brave the bitter weather outside and so set off to the fashion show....
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