Aqua Shard

London U.K.



I love Afternoon or High Tea and the British do it so well. Over the years I have experienced Afternoon Tea at The Ritz (a real treat!), Fortnum and Masons and an assortment of cafes. For this trip to London I saw that there were restaurants at The Shard that did Afternoon Tea and thought it would terrific to do tea with a view. I checked out the menus (I take my Afternoon Tea very seriously!) and chose Aqua Shard as the place to go.

Aqua Shard is a restaurant on the 31st floor of The Shard, upon entering The Shard building there is airport style security before you are let into the elevator. 

The restaurant does breakfast, brunch on weekends, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. Afternoon Tea is from 1pm to 4pm on weekdays and 5pm on weekends. When you make a reservation it states that you can't request a window table and all the tables have a good view, as luck would have it we ended up with a table at the window. The view is fabulous, sadly though the risk I took at being there in autumn was that it was a grey and drizzly day, I'm sure that on a bright sunny day the view would be even more amazing.



The food was superb, we opted for the traditional Afternoon Tea with tea, no champagne. There was an assortment of savoury food, scones, jam and cream as well as sweets, the dessert on the top had pipettes with raspberry coulis I think it was, that you squeezed out. I looked out onto The Thames, Tower Bridge was to the right, it can just be seen, the Tower of London in the centre of the photo and HMS Belfast peeking through the handle of the Afternoon Tea stand. It really was a 'what London landmark can you see?' type of setting.



The Shard seen from London Bridge, not all modern architecture is beautiful, but I love the new interesting buildings in London. I think The Shard is fabulous and really love the building locally known as the 'gherkin'.



Tower Bridge, view from London Bridge with HMS Belfast on the right.

Having Afternoon Tea in a special location needs to be on a 'must do' list when visiting the U.K. Aqua Shard certainly gets my vote as a great location. The area too is interesting with the Borough Market close by and being able to walk across London Bridge to the northern bank of The Thames.

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