Afternoon tea is such a lovely experience, the ambience, decor, piano, and everyone dressed in their best.
Can I offer just a few well meant comments following my experience.
Last summer my DIL treated 3 of us ladies who had birthdays around the same time, and my dgd aged 7, to afternoon tea in the wonderful Merchant Hotel in Belfast.
Everything was beautifully presented. However, there were a lot of very rich/creamy cakes, much too rich for us and for me in particular who doesn't like the wobbly creme caramel type cakes. We learned afterwards that we could simply have asked to exchange some of the cakes for more sandwiches and scones (which were so delicious). I wish we'd known we could have exchanged because ??35 each was quite expensive especially when the cakes weren't really to our taste. This was of course, just our personal taste but might apply to others who plan to attend an afternoon tea.
Also - The leftovers were presented to us just as described by Grannyknot. We carried them very carefully but upon opening the box when we arrived home we discovered there were no 'divisions' in the box. So the Creme Caramel cake and the strawberry tart were a splodgy mess and the speciality bread and scones were covered in the goo - nothing was recoverable.
If we'd known there were no divisions in the box we could have asked for napkins (or taken them with us discreetly) and 'padded' the spaces between each item.
giddyaunt I am sure you will have a wonderful time wherever you have your afternoon tea
I don't want to sound as though I'm throwing a negative on the afternoon tea experience, I'm definitely not..... and hope that my comments on my experience are taken in the (helpful) vein in which they are meant.