So a while back I bought a deal from the newly relaunched Citymob (which has some awesome deals btw) for the following:

• R199 for 4 pamper treatments and full use of spa facilities at Knightsbridge Spa in Century City.
• The offer included an express mani, express pedi, MAX facial
  treatment, Indian Head massage and full use of the facilities which includes a heated swimming pool & jacuzzi.

It wasn’t the first time I had seen this spa offering deals on group buying sites.  I had seen them on Citymob before and also on Groupon, so I figured I should try them out.  R199 for 4 treatments was after all a pretty amazing deal and I figured it would be the perfect thing to do the day before I jetted off to Mozambique (to look all pretty & stuff on my holiday ).

Now the spa is a bit of a mission to find if you’re not a Century City local.  I find that area very confusing to be honest.  But basically if you’re coming from town on the N1, you turn off to Canal Walk, go past the shopping centre turn off, then turn right at a big cream building, then go over a traffic circle, then turn at another cream building, another traffic circle, about two more traffic circles and then past some more cream buildings.  Easy right?   It’s on Esplanade Road, best you Google maps it for exact directions.

The building looks like this:

Surprise! It’s yet another cream building. Points to them for adding that pop of orange though. The building also has a bridge structure at the top joining two apartment pillars together.  So if you get lost, just look up for that, it’s quite big so you can’t miss it.

The spa is down one level from the building’s reception area.  The spa reception area is pretty basic with dark wood furnishings and beige & brown colours:

The pool & jacuzzi area is nice and big:

And the treatment rooms are quite “snug” but very tidy with a soft brown palette:

We kicked off with the express pedi & then the mani.  My biggest complaint here is that it was done while I was lying down on the bed.  So firstly, I couldn’t see what was going on and secondly the lighting in that room is way too dark for even my therapist to see what she was doing.

The pedi looked OK, but with the mani… let’s just say we had serious “creative differences”.  We both agreed on the basic principle that one shouldn’t paint nail varnish right into the cuticle as it might creep in under the cuticle and look weird.  BUT in her mind that meant leaving about a 2mm gap, thus exposing quite a bit of bare nail and looking like I’d only decided to pay for a 3/4 mani.  I think this diagram best depicts the issue at hand (excuse the pun. hehe):

I’m not sure whether this is a common practice.  But I’ve certainly never come across it before, so I asked her to fix it.  Instead of taking the varnish off though, she tried to fix it by going over it with a few more coats.  Needless to say the result wasn’t great, but at that point I just wanted to get on with things so I told her to leave it as is (thinking I would try to fix it up at home).

The facial & the Indian head massage was nice.  Very refreshing & relaxing.  So happiness returned to my soul after those two.  Sadly I was in a serious rush, so I didn’t have time to chill in the jacuzzi, but boy it did look pretty damn inviting.

Even though I was really annoyed with my mani, the other 3 treatments were cool.  So I still think it was a good deal for R199.  I’d say if you see them on a group buying special again, it’s fairly safe to give them a bash.  Then you can decide it it’s the kind of place you’ll go back to again if it was full price.  I probably won’t cause it’s a bit out of my way and there are a few places closer to home which I prefer…

xxx