LA RESERVE SPA

Ever since I started my Home Away From Home series on the blog, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting some absolutely fantastic hotels. Today, I have another exquisite spa to add to my list of favourites – the one and only La Réserve Hotel and Spa.

Earlier in the month, Hannah and I took an afternoon off and drove over to Geneva for a little down time. It was mid-week so there were very few people at the spa and we kicked off the day with a dip in their heated indoor pool.

Shortly after, I was called for my massage so I popped on a dressing gown (you know how much I love a good fluffy dressing gown) and headed to the room. I had a 1 hour Better Ageing Signature Massage (price: 200CHF).

The Nescens spa promote this idea of “better ageing” and “maintaining youthfulness”. I feel like better ageing is at least a little more realistic than the whole anti-ageing idea, so it’s somewhat refreshing to see such a high-end spa avoiding the typical marketing slogans and at least opting for something that feels a little more achievable.

At the beginning of the massage, the therapist kept on saying, “you’re really tense – just try to relax” and “just focus on your breathing”. I felt like I was trying really hard to relax my muscles and concentrate on my breathing but all I could think of was the million things I should be doing. And I’m pretty sure her telling me I was tense made me even more tense. These ridiculously busy last few months have obviously had an impact on my body but it was so nice to at least try to forget about it all for an afternoon.

I left the massage feeling a little more relaxed and we had a cup of tea before getting changed and heading to Café Lauren – the spa restaurant.

For lunch, Hannah had the John Dory and I had the tandoori-rubbed chicken with vegetables. The spa café offers a relatively healthy and well-balanced menu with light dishes. We didn’t love the fish and Hannah said it actually felt like quite a heavy meal but the tandoori chicken was fantastic, although I did have about four servings of bread to fill me up.

For dessert we had the strawberry crumble and the light chocolate mousse which were both utterly divine.

I still think of this chocolate mousse today…

I’d love to know how they actually made it quite so light and fluffy.

Wearing Ba&sh top

We both had work to get done in the afternoon so after our late lunch we headed back to Lausanne just in time to miss the rush hour traffic. It was back to Le Pointu for me and back to photo editing for Han.

Thank you La Réserve for such a wonderful getaway! We’ll be back soon! xS

Photos by Hannah Shan & G. Gardette for La Réserve Genève