High Tea at the Prince of Wales

Waterton National Park, Canada

The Prince of Wales Hotel, was the last of the grand lodges built by the Great Northern Railroad and the only one in Canada. The lodge was finished in 1926.

The "men's room" is down a flight of stairs in a small basement area. Apparently this was a common feature of grand old hotels. The Henry B. Plant Hotel in Tampa was finished in 1904 and had the same arrangement. It turned into the University of Tampa in 1932. I taught there long enough to receive tenure in the late 1970s.

The lake is at an altitude of about 4,500 feet. As we look down the lake and eat scones, the view changes from heavy rain to blue sky about once every five minutes. Highly unstable air masses move though the mountains  frequently causing winds of 100 MPH. The hotel was blown off it's foundation during construction and had to be winched back on and fastened more securely.

High Tea is served from 2 until 5 PM. Today they have a harpist.

The view from our table looks South over Waterton Lake. The lake was carved out by glaciers and has the typical long and narrow glacial shape, oriented from north to south..The lake is ten miles long. We walked the whole length again a few days ago.

The "tea" includes little sandwiches, bruscetta, scones, strawberry jam, a sweet cream, brownies, cookies, a peach jam thing and little lemon pies. 

This is a view of the lobby where the tea is served. We got little square plates about an inch on a side. Mrs. Phred thought that perhaps those were a place to park our teabags. Worked for me.

We see a brown bear on the drive back to the US. Mrs. Phred washed our passports in the washing machine so we were curious to see if they still worked. We got back in with no comment about them.