Afternoon Tea: A Comedy of Errors

Last weekend, two of my best friends from New York came to visit us in Oxford. I wanted to make sure Chelsy (my former roommate) and Rosa (my Pretty Little Liars watching buddy) got the full English experience, so on Sunday afternoon, we went to afternoon tea in Woodstock (a tiny village in the Cotswolds.)

After a day of playing in Blenheim Palace, we headed to the MacDonald Bear Hotel to check out their comfy-looking Churchill Lounge, but ended up in the hotel's empty downstairs bar, drawn in by the roaring fireplace. #perfect

But our elegant and relaxing tea soon spiraled into a comedy of errors. Don't worry--it wasn't a complete disaster. The whole experience left us in stitches and made for one of our most memorable moments yet.

Here are the highlights:

The tranquil room immediately changed on us--After we secured a quiet and warm little table in the corner near the fireplace, the fire went out and the tables around us started filling up with rowdy people getting drinks from the bar.

Our food didn't come on a sandwich tier--When you think of traditional afternoon tea, the first thing that comes to mind is the pretty little display the food comes out on. Instead, our waitress just kind of shoved plates of scones and sandwiches on our table. Sad faces all around. What are our followers on Instagram going to think? :(

Whatever. We didn't get sandwich tiers but we're still smiling.

Our waitress mixed up the teas--She placed a pot of tea in front of each of us and put another pot in the center of the table saying it was hot water. Poor Rosa started pouring her tea while talking to us and didn't realize she had poured a whole thing of water in her cup! Then, after she got rid of the water and began pouring her real tea, the lid fell into the pot! We tried to figure out how that even happened--none of us could even fit our lid in our pots if we tried. Rosa has mad skills.... As I was feeling sorry for her that her lid was compromised, we both realized we had the wrong tea. So, we traded, and I was now assigned to the pot with no lid. Womp womp....


We were the afternoon entertainment for an adorable British couple--As the errors kept piling up around us, we caught a cute husband and wife duo sitting next to us smirking and trying to suppress their giggles. "I'm so sorry for staring," she said. "I just can't look away." We all burst into laughter and struck up a conversation with them. The woman told us that yes, they should have brought the sandwiches and scones out on a tier, and she couldn't possibly figure out how Rosa managed to get the lid in the pot either. "Can you tell we're Americans?" we joked. They laughed and we spent the remainder of our tea learning the proper way to have English tea.

Then our new friends brought us a present--The lady and her husband said their goodbyes and left. But to our surprise, they soon returned and handed us a gold foil-wrapped package. "I just felt so sorry that you didn't get your traditional sandwich tier," she said. "So we bought you this panettone bread." How adorable are they?!

With our new British friends and the yummy panettone bread they brought us.

Have you ever had a funny moment like that with strangers?