Never having been to a proper spa hotel before, I wasn't sure what to expect. Would it be fabulous luxury, with aging, wealthy, overly made-up ladies who lunch decked out in diamonds and leopard-print swimsuits or more like a Soviet sanatorium, with people wandering around in plastic-soled white shoes being denied dessert? Well, a little of column A and a little of column B. The hotel (pictured below) had recently been renovated tastefully -- well, apart from the Casino on the ground floor, which had young ladies wearing stripper-style stacked platform shoes and very short skirts serving drinks. Our room was a good size, the bathroom was excellent (although lacking the usual array of shampoos and body lotions that you get in Western hotels), and we had a balcony with a great view of the fairground below -- and, thankfully, great double-glazing. The breakfasts and lunches that were part of the deal were fine: lots of pickled fish and sour-cream-drenched salads at both, all accompanied by "Hank Marvin plays popular 80s hits on his twangy guitar" music or bossanova classics. The swimming pool changing rooms smelled disturbingly of feet, but the sauna and pool facilities were great -- 5 different saunas and steam rooms, including one where you rubbed yourself down with great handfuls of salt before running through a series of increasingly cold jets. The spa treatments were excellent and highly efficiently organized, if a little more spartan than the day spas I've been to in the UK and US.
And the guests were, well, ordinary. Men with large, taut bellies; women with not-so-taut bellies in skimpy bikinis; small children being annoying as only small children can be; Russians, Latvians, and Finns. Lots of stonewash denim and other 80s fashions. Old people, young people, families, teenage couples, people in wheelchairs, irritatingly attractive 16 year olds. A man in the most appalling floral G-string posing pouch -- thank God I'd broken a contact lens by that point and was wearing my lower-strength glasses. But in general, just ordinary.
The notion of going to a spa resort for a holiday is fairly foreign to the Brits, preferring, as we do, to go somewhere sunny and get drunk for 2 weeks instead. Being pummelled, scrubbed, and sprayed with icy water doesn't sound like much fun, but it was extraordinarily relaxing. We didn't watch TV for a week, although the free Wi-Fi meant that we stayed in touch with any important developments in the world of celebrity gossip. (Kate Hudson and Owen Wilson! Posh's new haircut!). We took long walks (and one run) along the beach, read and played PSP games, had afternoon naps, and generally chilled out. Highly recommended if you just want to get away from it all for a few days.
1 comment:
So the Spavox magazine article wasn't too badly edited then, looks like you had a great time at the very same hotel as was in the Spavox article!
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