Darjeeling Darlings: A Brief History and Overview

Hello!

Pippa here. Now that Jules has done a smashing job of getting this blog off the ground and introducing ourselves to the blogosphere, I feel like giving a little bit more information about the Darjeeling Darlings and what we hope to accomplish through our blog...an abstract if you will.

As Jules mentioned in our first post, we met at Sweet Briar College and became quite good friends as we found many common interests, two of which being tea and the Royals. Speaking of which, if you were wondering were my nickname came from the story is this: multiple people have told me I resemble both of the Middleton sisters (maybe on a good day!).When Jules made the same observation the name Pippa just seemed to stick and I have been referred to as such ever since. Anyway... 

Lucky for Jules and I, Lynchburg, Virginia (where Sweet Briar is located) houses a pretty darn good tea house (to be featured in a future post!). Unbeknownst to us, we both had a separate knowledge of it previous to moving to school and meeting each other because of college visits to Sweet Briar/Lynchburg. Upon realizing our shared love for tea over dinner in the dining hall early in the semester we simultaneously asked, "Have you heard of Ploughcroft?!" Naturally the tea room became our clandestine hang out whenever we wanted to skip class "get off campus."

It wasn't until Jules and I met up over this past spring break that the idea for the blog was born. Wherever we travel to we're always on the hunt for tea-just like any proper pseudo English lady. As we talked over tea in a lovely tea room (to also be featured in a future post!), we decided to begin documenting our exploration of all things tea related. Tea 101, teas we love, teas we don't, visited tea rooms/houses across the country, the history of tea, and of course the Royals...because how could we not feature them?

This brings me to our mascot, Lizzie. Lizzie began as a funny between my mom and I; a silly Christmas stocking stuffer to take back with me to school for Jules and I to both get a kick out of. Lizzie is a small doll-sized, plastic figurine of the Queen that waves in the sunlight. Shortly thereafter, Lizzie became the mascot of Jules and I's spring break vacation where we took her everywhere with us for pictures: the beach, lunch, shopping, and of course the tea room mentioned above. Lizzie really won over the hearts of the British owners who refused to refer to her as anything but "Your Majesty." With such success in the tea house, how could we not let Lizzie accompany us on all our other tea-related travels as the official Darjeeling Darling mascot? And now Jules even has a Lizzie too! So, expect to see her quite a bit in future posts.

This ends my mini blog abstract which will hopefully give everyone enough information about the Darjeeling Darlings in order to better enjoy our total tea coverage to come.

Until next time! ~Pippa