High tea at the Empress Hotel

On Boxing Day I took my Aunty and my cousin to have afternoon tea at the Empress Hotel. It is one of those must do's when you visit Victoria. The Empress Hotel is one of the oldest hotels in Victoria and is a well known landmark in calendars, postcards, etc. It is beautiful inside kept down to the original colours and archecture. It was built in 1908. We started our journey looking at around 100 Christmas Trees all individually decorated and sponsored by organizations. These trees were themed very differently. An example was of a furniture company putting lounge suites decorations onto their tree or the building company dying screw drivers and concrete trucks onto their tree. It was simply amazing I had never seen anything like it before.
After this we had high tea. The High Tea consisted of three plates on a stand. The first stand consisted of sandwiches. The sandwiches were: a mini crossant with egg, a mushroom pate sandwich, a salmon pinwheel, mango chicken curry sandwhich, carrot and cream cheese sandwich. The second plate were three raisin scones (one for each of us). There was English strawberry jam and cream. The third plate consisted of cake. The cakes were mainly Christmas themed cakes: minced tart, Christmas cake, a mazipan cake, a sugar cookie, a very rich chocolate and a candy cane each. We all had one each of the food. It was delicious and for miniature sized portions you felt really full. In total it would have cost $182 Canadian but as my Aunty had a friends of the Empress we got 20 per cent discount which cut the bill down to $147. I didn't think it was too bad considering the food that we got and the environment. It's not something that I don't do it
every day. It will be a very fond memory for years to come. I took lots of photos as well. I'm hoping just before I go to Orlando I aim to get my photographs put onto Cd ROM. The looks a bit boring without photos. I also bought my Swiss watch that I saw the other night at the Bay Centre. I got 15 percent discount and paid $170 meaning I didn't have to pay any additional taxes. I also got a Swiss army knife thrown in as well. This will definitely be packed in the suitcase from now on.