Ladies of leisure

May 22, 2015 by Rachel Kershaw in Luxury 4

Earlier this year, my best friends and I made a pact to get together at least once every three months. Sounds simple but they all live miles away in Lancashire. There are babies, toddlers, jobs and all kinds of other commitments to consider, so confirming a date when we’re all free is easier said than done.

When a date was finally set for the girls to visit me in Newcastle, I was beyond giddy and insisted they arrive as early as possible so we could enjoy some quality time together during the day. Within minutes of their arrival I was laughing so hard I could hardly breath! I can’t even explain what was so funny but when the five of us are together we are hilarious, FACT!

One of my fave old photos of me, Alex, Emma, Gemma and Danielle

We could have quite happily spent the whole afternoon chinwagging on the sofa and sharing a packet of Hob Nobs but as you can imagine, I was keen to take my friends in to the city centre and help them understand why I love Newcastle so much.

Our first stop was the newly refurbished Chez Mal at Malmaison on Newcastle Quayside. The location is stunning, the hotel overlooks the Millenium Bridge with Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and the Sage Gateshead in the distance. That’s not the only reason I chose to take the girls here though… I’d been unable to attend to the glitzy launch party of Chez Mal a few days earlier and had heard so many great things about it. Chez Mal is also one of the few places in Newcastle that serves afternoon tea from as early as noon (most other hotels and restaurants don’t start serving it until the more traditional time of 2pm).

The afternoon tea was £15 per person and for that we enjoyed endless cups of tea and coffee, a selection of dainty sandwiches, mini creme brûlée served in teacups, mini victoria sponges, wedges of chocolate cheesecake and of course, warm fruit scones with clotted cream and jam. We felt ever so sophisticated as we were waited on like ladies of leisure and it was the perfect start to our girly weekend.

The time flew by way too quickly as we chatted about old times and enjoyed our calorific lunch but we had to hotfoot it to House of Savannah where I had booked appointments for us to be pampered and preened. I’ve written about House of Savannah in detail before and I knew it would be the perfect place for us to spend a couple of hours chilling out. Alex and I both chose to have a blow dry and wanted big wavy hair. We were chuffed to bits with the results and it was also one less thing to worry about when we were getting ready to go out later.

The salon is super stylish, I love the huge Georgian windows and upstairs in the spa area there’s the Buddah Lounge where we all got to relax after our treatments (Gemma, Emma and Danielle had their nails done). House of Savannah certainly isn’t the cheapest place in town but it’s really lovely for a treat and if you visit Mon-Thurs there are discounts available on your first and second visits.

After a spot of shopping and a whistle stop tour of some of my favourite city centre sights, it was back to mine to pop open the bubbly, crank up the tunes and get ready for a night out painting the Toon red!

I’ll be writing about what we got up to in the evening in a separate post but those of you who follow me on twitter may remember that I lost my camera recently and unfortunately all the photos from the day and night of the girl’s visit were on the memory card (devastated!) Therefore I can only share phone pics with you but I hope you still enjoy the posts and realise that Geordieland is the perfect destination for a girls weekend!

 
By Rachel Kershaw