Low Tea on the High Seas

As a continuation of my previous post detailing my nocturnal Queen Mary experience, I'm featuring here the joys that can be had on the ship during the day. After spending the night in what would have been a first class cabin during this ship's heyday, my husband and I decided to have tea in the ship's tea room. I was debating whether or not to call this high or low tea, but based on what I read here and having a lengthy discussion with my husband I decided that it was low tea.

Quite contrary to what you would expect with traditional gender roles, my husband likes having tea and those dainty little tea sandwiches whereas I am not so much a fan, not of the tea, but of the sandwiches. Instead of tea sandwiches I opted for a heartier roast beef sandwich and a cup of mushroom brie soup. In his defense, he did have a very "manly" Earl Grey tea whereas I selected the Darjeeling, which is a lighter black tea.

The best part of the tea experience, for me at least, is dessert.  These little eclairs and tartlets were as appealing to my taste buds as they were visually appealing. Just looking at this picture is making me salivate.

After tea, we explored the ship by taking a self-guided tour. For our tea outing and daytime excursion of the Queen Mary, I wore the following nautical inspired ensemble. I purchased the Anthropologie Sail Away Circle skirt here a few months ago. This was one of the few articles of clothing that my husband was actually super excited about due to his love of the clipper ships featured on the pattern. I was waiting for the perfect occasion to wear this nautical print, complete with little anchor buttons, so being aboard an ocean liner was as good of an occasion as any to debut it.

Here are some pictures of this skirt, paired with a Brenton striped shirt, which originated with sailors. In the middle picture I'm doing my best to recreate the famous scene from Titanic in which Rose and Jack outstretch their arms on the bow of the ship, in case you didn't get the cinematic reference.

Last, I've inlcluded some "random" pictures featuring various parts of this ship. You can see the smokestacks with lifeboats, the bridge of the ship, the flags on the mast, and a mosaic of the ship featuring all of the woods (some of which are now extinct) that are used on the Queen Mary.