The great cruise tradition of afternoon tea

You can eat pretty much 24/7 on a cruise ship. Cruise veterans know to wear their fitted clothes at the start of the holiday and keep the loose styles and elasticated waistbands for the last few days. I’ve often heard people remarking on a cruise holiday that you embark as a passenger and disembark as cargo!

The food on a cruise ship is indeed usually first class: great quality – a wide variety and plentiful and one of the traditions I enjoy partaking in onboard a cruise is afternoon tea. When you are dining later in the day, maybe after taking in a show, you probably won’t eat until 9pm. So it’s nice to break up your afternoon with a little something at around 4pm and this is where afternoon tea comes in!

This summer I’m going on Carnival’s newest ship Vista during its maiden season having ben chosen from hundreds of entries to become a Carnival Ambassador. You can read more about this announcement and find out who the other ambassadors are here. Vista is the cruise line’s 25th fun ship and the first Carnival launch since the Carnival Breeze in 2012. As part of their ambassador programme, my family and I are Carnival’s #SunseekingFamily which means we get to try out the ship on a Mediterranean cruise so we can show you what a family holiday onboard Vista will be like.

Last week the Carnival ambassadors and I got together for the great cruise tradition of afternoon tea, but as Vista is still currently in the shipyard being built, we had to make do with another 5 star hotel instead… The Berkeley in London for their famous Prêt-à-Portea!

Here, the Carnival marketing team, me and the other ambassadors pose for a photo before tea begins!

The Prêt-à-Portea is a three stage affair – first we enjoyed a glass of champagne, then the savoury treats followed by the very fashionable sweet stuff!

Over bite sized brioches with cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches, we talked about the shore excursions we were planning to do on the holiday. Whilst enjoying a carrot mousse we chatted about areas and facilities of the ship that we each wanted to blog about, and we also talked about booking our flights to get on this fabulous holiday.

Then, dessert came out and all the talking stopped whilst we whipped out our cameras to capture the beautiful cakes and show stopping treats that have made the Prêt-à-Portea famous!

Food is always well presented on cruise ships – we eat with our eyes long before we taste with our mouths after all. Cruise ships are also well known for creative food demonstrations – guests on board can often watch a melon being decoratively carved or a masterclass in sushi preparation. The kitchen wizards on ships can also be seen sculpting intricate ice centrepieces, so The Berkeley and their high end afternoon tea was the perfect setting to mirror the epicurean delights we can expect when Vista sets sail on May 1st 2016.

Just like on a cruise ship, the treats didn’t stop coming! Just as we were all declaring how stuffed we were, the waiter tempted us with another round. He brought out the scones for a cream tea and offered us various blends of loose leaf tea to choose from. We all had to take something home in a doggie bag – but you can hardly use that word to describe this super posh takeaway container!

Appreciating the experience of afternoon tea with Carnival just made me more excited for our cruise adventure in 21 weeks. I’ll be sharing our Vista experience with you so do let me know in the comments if there is anything you’d particularly like to know about Carnival Cruise Lines or the Vista and I’ll make sure to feature it in a future blog post!

2015-2016 Blog Ambassador: JuggleMum is proud to be an official ambassador for Carnival Cruise Lines and to bring you exclusive news and information about their newest ship – Carnival Vista. Carnival is ‘The World’s Most Popular Cruise Line®’ operating 24 ships. Learn more at their website
Click here to read all my Carnival Ambassador posts