Afternoon Tea at The Mount Nelson Hotel

the tea blending table

I love grand hotels! I love the ambiance, grace, glorious space and character. I love the history knowing that Katherine Hepburn stayed there or the Duchess of Windsor, all those elegant ghosts. The Alvear Palace in Buenos Aires, the Copacabana Palace in Rio, the Norfolk in Nairobi, Shepheard's in Cairo, Raffles in Singapore, the Oriental in Bangkok. The places of novels.

Lulu Frost vintage brooch w an original Plaza Hotel brass number 2

I had my wedding reception and spent my wedding night in a Grand Dame after all, New York's Plaza Hotel where Daisy and Tom, Jay, Nick and Jordan drank mint juleps and waited out the heat wave in The Great Gatsby.

I try to stay in them whenever I can but at the very least I can take tea in one or have a cocktail and pretend I am meeting Ernest Hemingway later for some absinthe and champagne or Somerset Maugham for a Singapore Sling.

melkterts

So the first place I had to go when I landed in Cape Town was the Mount Nelson Hotel where Dame Agatha Christie stayed. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes), stayed at the hotel as well at the end of 1928. A keen spiritualist, he is said to have outraged other guests by holding séances in his room. I just wanted tea.

The signature Mount Nelson Tea is a delicious blend of six teas: Darjeeling, Kenya, Assam, Keemun, Yunnan, Ceylon, and rose petals from their very own garden. Divine! Paired with a South African milk tart or "melktert" ... or two or three, - crystal chandeliers, wedding cake molding, a grand piano playing Cole Porter, surrounded by black and white photographs of Audrey, Greta, Marlene, Coop, Fred Astaire and Johnny Weissmuller in the lounge. Oh yeah baby, that's my cuppa tea!