Massages, Manicures and Om Nom Nom Nom

After all the commotion over my personal shoppers at House of Fraser post, the Bristol store offered me a VIP Experience, which I accepted because it sounded like fun! I was given spa treatments, a manicure and a meal for a friend and I. Of course, I had to take the Wife, because honestly, I couldn’t put up with the silent treatment from her.

So, we headed over to the Robin James Aveda Spa which is on the ground floor, sort of tucked away near the Benefit stand. I went for a massage whilst Louise went and had her nails done.

(apologies for the crap pictures in this post, it was SO dark in the spa (er, I guess thats cause its supposed to be relaxing? Duh.) and I didn’t want to use the flash, cause that would look odd. Is that a blogger thing? Sneaking pictures in dim lighting? Any tips?)

First of all, my feet were bathed, massaged and moisturised as some form of ritual whilst I answered some questions on how my skin and body were feeling today. The Aveda massages vary according to your answers to the questions, with different oils being used to suit your mood.

Infinity Nature – balances normal to dry skin conditions
Air Nature – nourishes dry, dehydrated and mature skin
Fire Nature – cools and soothes sensitive, irritated skin
Water Nature – clarifies blemished and congested skin
Earth Nature – purifies normal to oily skin conditions

My choices were all pretty much aligned with the Fire theme which made things easy! After my feet were all cleaned and moisturised, I was shown to a little room where I was told to strip down to my pants. I’ll admit it, I was a little nervous about this, as I’ve never had a massage before! I stripped down, and then faced the problem of what to do with the towels. Should I arrange them artfully to cover as much as my body as possible? Cover up my bum and boobs but leave the rest? When you’re standing in a strange room in your pants where a stranger could walk in any minute, these decisions are surprisingly difficult to make! In the end, I dove under the covers, and everything was OK. (The lady who did my massage said that she’s seen people just sitting on the bed completely starkers, so at least I wasn’t that embarrassing!)

(I have no idea what this machine was, but it looked VERY SCARY)

First of all, I had to lie on my back which seemed odd as part of a back massage, but it was really nice. (I’m sorry, I’m going to over use nice I think) I turned over and she really gave my back a beating! I’ve been getting some weird pains in my left shoulder for the past week or so, so she concentrated on that one, and it feels SO much better now.

After the lovely massage, I went downstairs where Lucy showed me the range of make up that Aveda has. She just did simple makeup on my eyes and a bit of gloss for my lips – the Aveda range is very neutral, lots of browns, taupes and beiges.

I headed over to Nails Inc then to have one of their Heavenly Hands treatments, where your nails are shaped, moisturised, your hands are massaged and then you have your nails painted – I chose Belgrave Place which is a deep violet blue. I’m still not used to seeing my nails look so pretty – whenever I paint them, they always seem to get a fingerprint on them.

Once we were all massaged and moisturised out, we headed upstairs to the Zest bistro. I hadn’t realised that this was in the building, I thought there was just the Cafe Nero downstairs! Zest is like a restaurant, with typical “department store” style food, but something a bit different. I had a chicken noodley salad which was delicious, and Louise had a goats cheese tart which was awesome.

Our boys had been let loose together whilst we were having our treatments – when I reminded Alex of this earlier in the week, his first thoughts were “Good, what sort of thing are we not allowed to do normally” – a phrase which made me wince! We found them up on the top floor, enjoying a vibrating chair massaging thing – Nathan ended up buying one of them, supposedly for Louise, but I suspect it will become his gaming chair!

We had a really lovely time with House of Fraser, and I think we’ll be heading back again for more treatments in the spa! Thank you so much to the team in Bristol!