a royally british day

Yesterday I combined my "try new things" 2013 goal with National Hot Tea month and visited The Queen Mary in Long Beach for a royally British day with three friends who love both trying new things and hot tea.

First up in Britishness, is the ship itself. Built in Scotland and first sailed out of Southampton, England, the ship is named for King George's wife, Queen Mary, although -- a fun bit of trivia -- it was originally intended to be named for George's grandmother Queen Victoria. However, George misunderstood the shipbuilders when they told him they wanted to name it for "England's greatest queen." So it was instead named for the greatest queen in George's eyes. 

There are a ton of different packages you can buy for tours of the ship, including a haunted tour. We decided to risk it and do the self-tour, where you are able to wander around by yourself through the various decks and even down in the engine rooms, where we explored looking for ghosts since we didn't splurge for the haunted tour. We didn't find any, but I did attempt to steal the ship... too bad they'd disabled the steering wheel ;)"

The main reason we visited the Queen Mary though was because my friend Diana wanted to see the exhibit dedicated to the woman who made her finally like her name.

Diana: Legacy of a Princess - A Royal Exhibition was like a history of the British royal family. There were newspaper clippings and artifacts dating back to Queen Mary all the way through Queen Elizabeth's entire life, and of course Diana's entire life. There were hand-written notes, photos, memorabilia and about eight of the dresses that Diana had auctioned off for charity before her death, many of which are owned by women in Southern California.

And the exhibit closes with dresses worn by Diana's daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, including the green dress she wore on her 2011 trip to LA when my pal Daryl met her and "Wills" as part of his job for the British Counsel-General. (However, much to Daryl's disappointment, none of the invites he hand-addressed for their arrival cocktail party were on display ;)

Following the exhibit and our tours, we headed to The Tea Room on the Sun Deck and enjoyed the Windsor Tea Experience, for our final bit of Britishness. I even had English Breakfast Tea to keep the theme going.

The sandwiches were very unique -- there was only bread on the bottom layer, cut in a circle and then the sandwich toppings were placed on top of it, or scooped on top of it with what looked like a melon-baller in the case of the egg salad, curry chicken and shrimp salad. All were delish, but I think the egg salad and (surprisingly for me) curry chicken were my faves... of the sandwiches.

But my absolute fave part of any tea lately is the scones! This tea service included vanilla, cranberry and chocolate chip scones, which were all yummy. The only problem with these scones was the waitress didn't really bring enough clotted cream and preserves for four people to eat two scones each.

Following the sandwiches and scones, came the petit fore plates filled with yummy desserts. I was too full to try them all, but my fave of the things I tried were the little lemon meringue tarts on the bottom of the tray. They are the absolute perfect lemon meringue -- two bites, which is just enough to quench that tangy-sweet craving.