"High Tea" at Raffles Hotel

Raffles Hotel, a true Singapore icon.  Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (b. 6 July 1781, off Port Mo rant, Jamaica - d. 5 July 1826, Middlesex, England) is famously known as the founder of modern Singapore. Besides signing the treaty with Sultan Hussein on 6 February 1819 and thus placing Singapore as a British settlement, Raffles made several contributions that helped establish Singapore as a thriving settlement.

Raffles conceived a town plan to remodel Singapore into a modern city. The plan consisted of separate areas for different ethnic groups and provision of other facilities such as roads, schools and lands for government buildings

You will see many things named "Raffles" in Singapore but the Raffles Hotel was his dwelling place established in 1887.  We have been wanting to go and tour Raffles and today was our day as they serve a High Tea.  Having High Tea in Singapore was on our list of things we want to do while here so we combined both desires and had High Tea at the Raffles Hotel today.

What is High Tea?  Sounds fancy doesn't it?  Well High Tea actually means an afternoon tea that includes meat, it is more of a meal, dinner really.  In Singapore most people eat six meals a day, breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, high tea, and supper.  High tea is from 3-6 pm supper is eaten between 7 and 11 pm. This means that when our family goes out to dinner between 5 and 7 pm we are frequently the only ones in the restraunt.

High Tea at Raffles Hotel is served in the Tiffin Room

It is a grand room with white linen table clothes, harp music and makes for a great date with your husband.

What cute little sandwiches, scones and oh how good was the clotted cream and jam!

 The Raffles Hotel serves a true High Tea so we sat at our table at 4 pm and there was plenty of food to choose from including meat.

I think I want one of these tea servers so I can have a true High Tea for the ladies when I get home.

Our tea choice was a smooth Earl Grey and we went through 4 little pots of tea that was accompanied by great conversation and much needed relaxation.

After the tea time we explored the hotel, it is huge! With a grand entrance and stair case.

 Here is a mini model of the grounds that was in the museum.

The gardens are incredible, they occupy over a quarter of the estate and contain 55,000 species of plants. 

There is a concert on the lawn area with these cute little English chairs

just waiting to be sat in.

There are many different dining areas at Raffles Hotel both indoor and out door with wide open spaces, you can almost forget that you are in the middle of a densely populated city.

Long corridors will greet you and invite you to explore the hotel grounds.

Long Bar is famous for being THE place the Singapore Sling was invented, the bar was closed but here is a picture to show that we were there.

If you ever venture into Singapore we think that an afternoon spent having High Tea and exploring the grounds of Raffles Hotel is an afternoon well spent.