London | Day N° 19 | Eli and Zab Reunited in London!

At the Dorchester for high tea!

Zabelieth is together at last! Since our spring semester ended in May, Eli has been interning in New Haven, Connecticut, while I spent half my summer in Chicago and the most recent half in London, studying at the London School of Economics. Eli is starting graduate school in Uppsala in two weeks, and since I'm still in London, we knew this was our perfect opportunity to visit Europe together!

We are spending three full days in the UK, two in London and one in Oxford, and then crossing the Channel to visit Versailles, Paris, and Nice. After that we each fly off to our respective destinations: Eli to Uppsala, and I am heading back home to Virginia to start my last semester of college. Though we only have a week together in Europe, we are going to cram each minute full of new experiences! Between travel, sightseeing, dining, and leisure (beaches on the French Riviera.....), this coming week is destined to be absolutely incredible for both of us.

Eli arrived at Heathrow early Thursday morning, and I hopped on the tube to go meet her there. It was so good to see a friendly face after being without my usual friends or family for a month! I think she was just as shocked as I was to realise that we are finally in the UK together. We have been dreaming of traveling here for more years than we can count, and it's surreal for those dreams to finally come true.

Though we arrived back at High Holborn relatively early in the morning, I had class shortly thereafter, so Eli decided to be a trooper and walk down Drury Lane to see Aldwych and the LSE campus with me. We had a quick pot of tea at the Delaunay Counter, and were still speechless at the fact that we were there together. Since we were little, both of us have held British culture and literature in very high esteem, mainly because of our great love for the classics. My family ingrained in me great respect and love for British culture: for Winston Churchill and GK Chesterton, Adam Smith, Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, James Herriot, Doctor Who, and British things in general (teatime! horsemanship! dog-loving!). Through high school, Eli and I shared our love for this country and its traditions, especially in colonial times, and together we adoringly researched things like the East India Company. We worshipped writers like JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, and since then have only wanted to learn more and more about the UK. We've made teatime a tradition when no one else has, we've baked scones together, watched British films hundreds of time, and debated novels like Lady Chatterly's Lover. We've also done all these things over again more recently with French culture, but I'll get to that in a couple of days!

Anyway, upon arriving in London, jet-lagged Eli and I had tea at the Delaunay Counter, and after my class, we trekked down the Strand to the Mall and did a walking tour of the River Thames, Victoria Embankment Gardens, Buckingham Palace, St James, Westminster Abbey, and Fortnum & Mason, and Eli was so excited to find a Laduree branch on Piccadilly (where I got some delicious Marie-Antoinette-inspired tea!). We hadn't seen each other in months and were catching up, so it was a quick, casual tour of some of London's most famous sights.

The Promenade at the Dorchester

I had my final exam at LSE the following day, so after doing a quick tour, we settled down at Le Pain Quotidien on High Holborn so I could do some studying before teatime. Several weeks before, I had made a reservation for afternoon tea at the Promenade at the Dorchester, one of the renowned afternoon tea venues in London (along with the Delaunay, the Ritz, the Waldorf, etc.). Eli and I have been having afternoon tea for years, and threw a beautiful, elaborate tea party for our closest friends while we were in high school. But this is the first time that we've had the opportunity to enjoy a true British afternoon tea together!

It was wonderful. The Promenade at the Dorchester is completely stunning, with gold pillars, exotic tatues, bright walls, and tons of greenery. The teacups and teapots were exquisite, and we enjoyed many courses: tea sandwiches (cucumber, smoked salmon, egg, mozzarella and basil, herbed chicken), a Middle Eastern sampler plate, little miniature ice cream cones, scones with jam and clotted cream (of course), and an assortment of French pastries, which we couldn't even touch, we were so full at that point! It was just too perfect. The setting was beautiful, the service was very impressive, and the food and tea could not have been better. It was just a shame we couldn't eat more! They kept trying to bring us more food, and it was such a shame to have to turn it away.

When we had eaten our fill and and drank at least two teapots full of tea each, we simply returned back to High Holborn so I could study for my exam the next morning and Eli could finally get some much needed sleep. But we knew more adventures awaited us in the following days!