Afternoon Tea - Prince of Wales Hotel, Niagara-on-the-Lake

Niagara-on-the-Lake is a unique community approximately half an hour from Niagara Falls. This town has a wide variety of shops to visit, bakeries to sample local treats, and window shopping galore. Crowded during a holiday weekend, but still fun to visit, it is a popular travel destination. Our agenda included a visit to the Niagara Apothecary on Queen Street (an authentic museum restoration of an 1869 apothecary), and to savor Afternoon Tea in The Drawing Room at the Prince of Wales Hotel, a historic Victorian hotel built in 1864. 

There are several dining options available at the Prince of Wales Hotel, but it was the Afternoon Tea that interested our small family group. This view is looking into The Drawing Room where the Afternoon Tea is held, from a small vestibule in the hotel. Fresh flowers adorned the hotel.

Ornately framed pictures of royalty grace the halls throughout the hotel, shown below, Queen Victoria.

There are several options for their tea service, the traditional Afternoon Tea, The Prince of Wales Tea, The Royal Tea, the Monarch Tea, and the Princess/Prince Tea for the young folk and the High Royal Highness Tea which includes a charcuterie tray and scotch. We mixed and matched a few of the tea options. One of the options included a fruit and cheese plate featuring Canadian cheeses. We selected two of those to share, and opted to enjoy them as an appetizer. It was a very nice variety of fresh fruit and four different selections of flavorful cheeses. 

 We also selected the tea option that included a choice of Kir Royale or a Mimosa. Since this was a special destination tea for us, we added the Kir Royale to our Afternoon Tea. Individual pots of tea were included, and we each selected our favorites. Shortly after we finished the fruit, cheese and crackers, the tiered trays arrived, laden with a nice variety of hearty sandwiches, scones, and dessert.

The bottom tray, laden with tea sandwiches, included two cucumber sandwiches on white bread, an avocado and tomato on a flat bread, two petite salmon triangles, chicken salad on a croissant, and egg salad. A large scone with jasmine tea infused sultanas and served with cream fraiche, butter, and strawberry preserves was on the middle tray alongside a bourbon cream puff. 

The top tier of the tray held assorted flavors of macarons, a shortbread cookie, and a miniature crumb cake along with additional fresh fruit garnish. It was a very nice Afternoon Tea, and we left with a small box of leftover desserts to enjoy later. The décor in the Drawing Room fit the theme for afternoon tea with assorted silver tea pots in the corner cupboard, and a variety of tea pots and cups on a vintage oriental cupboard. 

And since we had some extra time before our reservations for tea, we walked around the gift shops, and we enjoyed a horse drawn carriage ride around the quaint town of Niagara-on-the-Lake.