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Published: January 6th 2008
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Well life has returned to normal with the parents back in NZ and Chelle and Jessie heading off to a spa to be relaxed!
The time the lucky spa that was to be reviewed was the Taj Spa at the Taj Palace hotel. The only downside in going to this hotel was that it was in DEIRA! I know DEIRA. We never go to Deira. We had no idea where in Deira it was and had to resort to the use of a map to find its location. We worked out that it was just over Maktoum Bridge, but to add another reason to the list of reasons why we don't go to Deira very often there was a massive car crash in the tunnel access to Maktoum bridge and the traffic was complelty stopped on Sheikh Zayed road for miles.
So we aborted our attempt to cross Maktoum bridge and instead headed for the blissfully empty Garhoud toll bridge. If we hadn't made that wise and inspired call I am sure that we would still be sitting in that traffic jam.
But we did make the call and made it to the spa on time for our
chinese massage treatments. And when I say in time I mean early enough to use all the complimentary facilities such as the sauna and steam rooms.
The entrance to the Taj spa was a little odd as you first had to walk through the health club area and then go outside and walk past the swimming pool. But we you actually entered the doors of the spa you felt like you had crossed a threshold (yes this is a word that spa designers actually use to describe going through the front door of a spa) into a world of relaxation!
The lady on the front desk of the spa was a bit of a dragon though and wasn't really all that welcoming. However when we passed into the changing rooms we enjoyed ourselves somewhat more. We started off having a sauna and then moved onto the steam room. The steam room was easily the steamiest steam room that we have been in to date, but unfortunately it didn't have the lovely lavender scent of the Grand Hyatt's steam room.
The treatment itself was lovely. It started with us sitting in the lovely foot rub chairs and being
treated to a wee foot wash, scrub and rub whilst drinking a lovely, sweet cup of juice. We then moved onto the treatment rooms for our massage. Apparently a chinese massage uses knuckles a lot more than a traditional massage. They put hot oil on our backs and then got to work on all those nasty knots ( of which I had quite a few as I had been diving the day before and managed to tweak a few back muscles).
After the massage we were taken to the relaxation room where we were given a lovely cup of ginger and honey tea, and a hot wheatbag for our shoulders. The wheat bag was a nice touch and one that we hadn't experienced before.
The only downside to the entire treatment was when the came up to us at the end in the relaxation room and asked us how we were going to pay. Although this was nowhere near as bad as the Grand Hyatt Spa making us pay in advance, we were still a little unimpressed.
But overall probably an 8 out of 10.
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