That 70's Vacation - Queen Charlotte Tea Room

As far as restaurants go, much of the area around Niagara Falls is catered to American tourists - Outback Steakhouse, Hooters, Applebee's, Denny's...

We did find a rather unique place to have mid-afternoon tea at Queen Charlotte Team Room located a few miles away from the tourist section.

Fortunately, my father did research in advance on TripAdvisor and knew to make a reservation for a 2PM High Tea on Saturday afternoon.

Unfortunately, we forgot where the restaurant was located as we turned off our cell phone data plans since we were roaming in Canada. Additionally, we didn't have a strong enough wifi signal in our hotel room at the Radisson to look it up before we left for the day.

We knew the street address was 5689 Main St and we knew where Main Street was, but we didn't know exactly where 5689 was.

However, as you can see, Main Street is pretty long, stretching all the way from our hotel out into the further reaches of the town. It could have been a 10 minute walk or a 45 minute walk for all we knew.

We had just come from seeing the great Niagara Falls at Table Rock Center and were taking the WeGo Red bus line back towards the commercial area up the hill.

Unfortunately, he got confused and told us to get off at a much earlier stop than we wanted. As a result, we had to walk a long way on a hot 90 degree afternoon, plus we didn't know exactly where on Main Street we were going. Nevertheless, my stubborn father pushed forward, offering an insincere apology to my mother and me as we drudged along the sidewalk.

But once he had to carry a tired (yet adorable) toddler in his arms, he conceded that we couldn't walk without clear directions. So he turned on our cell phone data, realized how far we were and hailed a taxi. We just barely made it for our 2PM reservation.

By the time we entered the small restaurant, we were drenched in our own body sweat and walked right into one of the two dining rooms where other couples and families were enjoying their lunch. They all paused their meal to look at us walk in. Unfortunately, there was no air conditioning in the establishment, only some rotating fans. My father did his best to freshen up in the restroom, but he was literally dripping through his shirt.

Eventually, we were seated since we had existing reservations though several other patrons were turned away as they were fully booked that afternoon. The small table by the window was reserved for us and we took our seats, admiring the quaint little table setting.

For High Tea, we were given two orders of scones with clotted cream and some finger sandwiches.

I enjoyed the ceremony of applying the clotted cream with preserves.

Then we had some Scottish Caramel tea. I was a big fan.

But what made my day was the platter of desserts that came out at the end. We had an assortment of cupcakes and regular cakes for us to sample.

It was way too much sugar for a young child to have, but since we were on vacation, my parents let me go to town.