Tea Party Girl’s Top Tea Moments on the Road

Helping my daughter introduce her three-year old cousin to the tea party at Teddy Bears and Tea Cups. A tearoom dedicated to the children’s tea party, they provided china, linen napkins, and a wide variety of well-brewed teas to us. They also provided the girls with a VERY chocolate-y cookie first thing and we joked with them about thrashing the beautiful napkins. We did an excellent job. My niece’s favorite part was the same activity I see children of all ages enjoy the most–using sugar tongs to pinch the sugar cubes…over and over again!

Visiting the Tea House on Los Rios in San Juan Capistrano. Plays with Fire went with me and we sat on the porch admiring the gardens surrounding us. As the son of a former restaurant owner, he always brings the realism to my sighs of, “Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to open our own tearoom?”

The tea highlight of the trip was our visit to the tearoom, Paris in a Cup. The more I visit tearooms, the more difficult I find it to be completely impressed. Few places seem able to pull together all the elements of the food, service, and ambiance and truly transport their customers. But as my mother would say (pictured above with my darling sister-in-law), Paris in a Cup knocked it out of the ballpark. We truly felt we were sitting in a tea salon in Paris, not downtown Orange, California. They kept the tea hot by refilling our tiny pots often, a feat neither of the other tearooms I visited made a priority, unfortunately.

This picture shows the number one place I wish I could have sipped a cup of tea, but couldn’t. I dragged my children to the gardens of Filoli, a historical country estate here in California, on one of our last days. The other two warmed up to it as we discovered the treasures, but medieval son, (pictured above, heheh) not so much. I relished every rose, inhaled vines of sweet peas, and almost laid down in the beds of sage and thyme. The home was equally beautiful and I expected to run into Jane Austen in the drawing room* any moment.

I don’t have a great tea reason for this last picture, I just love it. The Irish Wells look tan (!), rested, and glad to be together. (Yes, doodah, medieval son AGAIN has his mouth open in the family picture). I feel so very blessed to reap some of the work sown over the years when the children were really young, I was so tired, and daily beauty meant constantly wiping, wiping, wiping faces, counters, and other miscellaneous places. To still enjoy my children’s company (and husband’s!) and our time together truly makes me thankful.

*So, I just learned the reason it was called the drawing room. Who else knows? Leave a comment, even if you’re making a guess.

Au revoir!