Last year Kelly, Rebecca and Emma, a fantastic trio of Kiwi ladies, started a travel link up. In January 2014, twenty people joined the link up with blogs about their fabulous travel plans for the year ahead. In August, I cottoned on to this awesome idea and joined in to write about my favourite Staycations, I loved writing the post and not only was it great to enter into a communal bloglovin’, I also got lots of traffic (bloggers care about these things).
For September the ladies were kind enough to let me guest host and I came up with the idea of a Room with a View, which is still one of my favourite posts that I’ve ever written. Thirty-one people joined the link-up which I helped to host and I so excited about how much everyone enjoyed it.
In January 2015 we recounted our travel plans of the year and 46 people joined the link up…more than double the original number! It’s a amazing to see how an idea started by three brilliant bloggers just grew and grew, bringing people to together and giving the opportunity to interact with other people and see aspects of travel from all different perspectives.
To celebrate the success of the link up Kelly decided to bring us all together into one room for the time honoured blogger tradition of afternoon tea at the gorgeous Brown’s Hotel. So when the day dawned I buttoned up my coat, slung my camera bag over my shoulder and headed out for a fun afternoon of BlogSpeak!
Kelly had taken care to reserve us a big private room called the Roosevelt room. It was great, with 25 bloggers or a hashtag of bloggers (the collective noun for a group of bloggers, thank you Jasiminne) in one room we were free to blather on loudly in BlogSpeak, constantly click away on our cameras and munch on maracrons without annoying the ‘normal people.’
It was a little bit like the UN in that room with representatives from the USA, South Africa, Australia, the UK and lots of Kiwis! Unlike I imagine a UN meeting to be, there was free flowing Ruinart champagne, which kept us bloggers very happy.
When I’d seen the list of who was coming I was excited to see many lovely ladies who I’d met before and many of whom I’d been reading for the past year and was still yet to meet. I was particularly pleased to be sat next to Kat from Lady Loves Cake as I’ve been reading her blog for a while and had lots of interaction with her on social media, but I was meeting for for the first. She’d bought a mini blogger in the making Mr Man Jr…who was in fact the only male in the party! Anyway, it’s good to get them started early on the macarons and scones ;).
Now before I tell you more about the tea, I must tell you that something rather annoying happened. I’m still yet to switch my camera from auto mode but I must have accidentally done so as I took a ton of photos that all ended up overexposed! Fortunately, super photographer Jacintha from Urban Pixxels was there to set me back on the straight and narrow but it was impossible to save the photos and I had to take them all again from what was left intact!
There were lots of different teas for all different dietary requirements, the normal one contained traditional freshly cut sandwiches, scones and gorgeous looking cakes and pastries.
Rather than the sandwich layer I had smoked chicken and guacamole on spelt bread (not pictured because I’d already eaten it!), poached salmon and dill creme on dark rye bread, chicory leaf with smoked mackeral and a quails egg, gem heart leaf with tabbouleh. I’m not going to lie, it was tasty but I had serious food envy as I gazed over at my fellow bloggers’ smoked salmon sandwiches. The kind Zoe, Suze and Manasi, of course let me nick a couple!
My top layer was a little more decadent and contained a flourless chocolate cake, a coconut cake and fruit in a chocolate cup…plus a jelly already eaten!
A scrumptious looking sponge was passed around as well as a raspberry jelly to accompany my tea-tox.
The staff at Brown’s were fab, constantly refilling our champagne, topping up our tea and replenishing the sandwiches. They didn’t seem at all phased by our foreign blog speak, enormous cameras and demands for more scones.
It really was quite the perfect afternoon, please can it be a regular occurrence?
Brown’s Hotel
33 Albemarle Street
London
W1S 4BP
020 7943 6020
Brown’s Hotel gave us a group discount
