March 30: Tea and a Ballet



Me with my friends Pa and Sarah at tea



Because we had such a busy afternoon with tea scheduled, our Travel Journal professor gave us the day off. All us girls on the second floor spent the afternoon comparing outfits and dressing up. We left for tea at 4, which was at the Gore Hotel, a really fancy place just a few blocks away from our flat. Tea was very nice. They brought us lots of little sandwiches with roast beef, ham, egg, salmon, and such, two very fresh scones with clotted cream and black currant jam, and dessert trays. The dessert options were amazing. I ate two of the freshly made eclairs. They were beyond delicious. The ballet didn't start till 7:30, and apparently they expected us to just stay at the tea place and leave directly from there, but that of course was way too much time sitting in a hot tea room, so we came back to our place before leaving for the ballet.

The ballet, Cinderella, was incredible. I had soooo much fun! The dancers were amazing, and the costumes were wonderful and I just thoroughly enjoyed myself. The backgrounds and costumes were done in muted, darkish tones, so the Prince and Cinderella in white and silver just sparkled. Cinderella's coachmen, lizards, mice, and a frog, all had very elaborate animal costumes, and I just can't imagine how they managed to dance with such gigantic masks and outfits. Our seats were in the top balcony, the third one up, but we could still see everything quite well. The best part of the night was when Cinderella came on stage in her ballgown costume, and a little girl behind me let out this giant gasp of wonder and astonishment. It was adorable.

On the tube ride home, I notice that my throat kind of hurt, which was odd, and then when we got home, all of a sudden I started feeling horribly sick. It happened within about 10 minutes, so I had no clue what was going on, so I figured I'd better get to bed as soon as possible. I was not feeling well at all.