Showing posts with label hotel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hotel. Show all posts

Saturday, 17 March 2012

All blissed out

Hello and happy weekend to all my lovely followers, hope you are relaxing and enjoying yourselves. I really cannot believe how quickly time is going at the moment, another weekend and only two weeks until half term! So excited as I have some really fun things planned for half term and am willing the time away now!!

I am super busy at the moment, perhaps that's why it seems as if time is travelling at the speed of light! In these busy times, I am always reminded of the need to take a moment, slow down and relax for a while. I have to admit though, I find this difficult at times. With late nights working and then straight to bed, I often go a whole week straight with little down time, other than to eat and shower! Weekends and half terms are therefore sacred, and I try to pencil in a good few days of just pure relaxation - good food, plenty of magazines and new films/TV to watch.

In keeping with the relaxation theme, I recently decided that a spa day was in order, a whole day of nothing but relaxation, luxury treatments and delicious food. My best friend and I booked our spa day just before Christmas and decided to take it in the February half term. We travelled up the day before and stayed in a hotel so we wouldn't need to rush around on the day of the spa. We chose the gorgeous country spa Clarice House in Bury St Edmunds on the recommendation of my mum who visits the spa herself.

 Happily, the spa day was everything we wanted and more! We enjoyed 5 treatments including a 1 hour facial and massage, full use of the facilities and a three course lunch in their AA Rosette awarded restaurant. I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the fact we were able to wear our robes and slippers all day, even for lunch! Here are a few snaps I took to remember our day (apologies for poor quality, I only had my iPhone available!)

Beautiful country house interiors
The ONLY time you will catch me without make up... and only because it's mandatory!
Hot choc : )
Starters! Clare opted for a goats cheese panna cotta with hot and sour cherry tomatoes, confit  pepper and a parmesan twille.
I chose a tomato and basil soup with rosemary bread.
Clare's main was an individual minced venison ragu, horseradish mash and carrots and parnsips.
I chose a pan fried chicken breast with pancetta, on a bed of risotto with a balsamic vinegar dressing and watercress accompaniment.
Gorgeous dessert: fondant chocolate tart with honeycomb ice cream.
Relaxing in the conservatory in between treatments.
Pretty toes!
A most brilliant day, and boy did it feel good to just relax and have nothing else to think about! With busy lifestyles I think spa days should be mandatory for women, at least once a year! I intend to return... : )

Enjoy the rest of your weekend elves : ) XOXO

Friday, 2 September 2011

Dreaming of Berlin

Happy Friday everyone, it feels like I have done a full week at work when in fact I have only been back two days and haven't actually taught a lesson yet... still after all the rest I had over summer I guess i'm bound to feel tired!

My last few days have mostly consisted of research for our trip to Berlin. I am still unbelievably excited and now wishing the time away until December! I have started researching places to visit and things to do, logging the details in a folder on my desktop created especially for the trip. I know I definitely want to go to the Reichstag buildings, the Berlin wall, the Bundestag, Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburger Tor and the Schloss Charlottenburg. Naturally I will spend a good portion of time on The Kurfürstendamm, one of the main shopping streets in Berlin which, luckily is only 400m from our hotel (wonder how that happened...!)

I took on the job of researching hotels, mainly because I enjoying researching and weighing up all the options before booking. Hubby was happy to take on this job as it is my birthday present after all, however, I have a certain 'vision' of the type of hotel I like to stay in, long gone are the days when we were students and had to find the cheapest 3 star accommodation around! So I volunteered, knowing I could devote more time and energy to the task, and, get us as near the Kurfürstendamm as possible!

Cool Bedroom at Hotel Sir F.K. Savigny Berlin

The hotel I chose is called the Hotel Sir F.K Savigny in the Charlottenburg district (another fact that made me very happy!) The hotel is 4 star and is billed as a cool, boutique style hotel with Nespresso machines in every room, iPod docks and free soft drinks in the mini-bar. According to Trip-advisor, the hotel is ranked number 37 out of 655 in Berlin so should be pretty good! : )



I am really enjoying researching and planning, being organised makes me happy (my OCD ways are a constant source of happiness to me, although perhaps not others around me!) I love the fact we are going just before Christmas too, the Christmas markets should be really good, and it will be a great way to get into  the Christmas spirit!

Swarovski Christmas Tree Berlin 2006
So I am officially in Christmas countdown mode! Which is cool, as my older students always insist on doing a Christmas countdown each week from the first week back in September anyway! Hope you are all excited for the weekend, I am, no 6.30 rise tomorrow! 
: ) xoxo