By Zohra Alnoor

Bernard-Paul Heroux once said, “There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea.”

So, over Spring Break, I decided it was a good time for tea.

On Tuesday, March 13, a friend of mine and I walked into Tudor Place. It was a bright, sunny afternoon, and I was ready for a Victorian-style tea party.

After watching numerous films with their own versions of tea parties, I knew I had to attend one soon. Although I could create my own version of a tea party at home, there’s something wonderful and relaxing about being waited and served on. There’s no thinking involved on your part. That’s what I wanted.

Tudor Place charged $25 for every non-member attending and $20 for every member. To be a member, you’d have to pay $45 and you gain access to exclusive events as well as regular events, but with a discounted price. I decided to just pay for the non-member price and see how I liked this event to begin with. What I saw and experienced when was even better than I has imagined.

The Georgetown mansion had tables laden with silver, three-tired platters filled with tea-party foods from scones to strawberries.

“When they placed the food on our table, I kept thinking, ‘That’s nothing. I’m gonna finish that in a second,’ said my good friend, Shabnum Hussain, 23, an Art student at The Art Institute in Sterling, Va. “But by the end of the event, I was so full and still had food left over. It was more like a hearty meal than finger foods.”

First, two of the manor’s staff members came around the tables with two intricately-designed silver teapots bearing two types of tea, Wild Berry and English Breakfast. They continued to stop by each table with more tea every few minutes.

“The service was great and the staff was kind,” said Hussain.

Towards the end of the tea, many women sat at their tables with empty cups and plates, and shared laughs and conversation with ladies whom they knew and ones that they had just met.

“My girlfriends and I do many teas. This is the first one that we’ve come to like this,” said Susan (who for inexplicable reasons decided not to give me her last name), from Sterling, Va. She came to the event with a large group of her female  friends.

There were no men at this event. What a shame. They missed out on some delicious food. Their loss; more food for the women.

Some women came from afar, like Cathy Jones from Toms River, N.J. who was in town on business and met up with a friend for the tea.

“The event was fantastic, I’m definitely dragging [my friend] back here the next time she’s in town,” said Andrea Zizack, a 2007 George Mason graduate, who is now a Trade Specialist at the United States Department of Agriculture.

Her friend, Jones promptly replied, “You can’t exactly call it ‘dragging’ if I would want to come.”

After the tea party, the guests, which included women from their teens to their 80s, were given a full tour of Tudor Place. On the tour, we were given an insight of the life of everyone in the home throughout the centuries from the many different owners, to the butlers and slaves. A tour guide led the group through the many rooms in the manor from the drawing room and dining room, to the kitchens and the bed rooms, giving the group a background of household items that are rare in today’s homes, to quick bios of the people in the many paintings that lined the walls.

Overall, it was a wonderful way for one to spend a beautiful, sunny day.
“This was definitely something that everyone should try out,” said Hussain. “I experienced a part of D.C. that I never even knew existed.”

 

 

Delicious :)

Tea Party