All posts filed under: Travel

Malmaison Manchester review

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It’s back to work today after an extremely eventful weekend and there’s one thing sticking in my mind – the wonderful stay at the Malmaison in Manchester on Friday evening. I was invited to try out the new restaurant and cocktail bar Smoak and Embers, along with an overnight stay. We arrived, threw our bags down and retreated to the buzzing restaurant. We were sat on a table for two right next to another couple who took great pleasure in listening to our conversation more than concentrating on their own. And despite taking pictures of the food themselves on a small compact digital camera, they looked gobsmacked when I got my DSLR out. Luckily they only ordered a main and were gone before our mains arrived. Malmaison Manchester is situated in the heart of Manchester, literally a stones throw away from Piccadilly station and I get the feeling that Smoak is a destination restaurant in it’s own right, rather than just the usual run of the mill hotel restaurants. Having visited the London Malmaison and …

Malmaison London – hotel and brasserie

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Malmaison hotels ‘dare to be different’, or so they claim. I was intrigued before my stay and wanted to see how. Upon entering the dimly lit and darkly coloured reception area, I got the gist of what was to come. A rude painting hangs above the stairs that go down to the brasserie and the black and red decor sets the scene. I was pleasantly surprised to see a huge kingside bed, plasma screen TV, CD and DVD player in the room. The hotel staff had even left two bars of Flake ‘allure’ on the bed. The bathroom was sleek but there were no stand out features – except of course the toiletries that you are encouraged to use and take home with you. The fact that they provide you with a bottle of massage oil tells you a little bit about the ways in which the hotel group ‘dares’ to be different. We arrived at the brasserie for dinner and perused the menu. Due to the location (Farringdon), I imagine that the biggest customers …

Riverford Oraganic Farm trip

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Veg boxes delivered to your door. Some people love them, others think they’re a bit of a waste of money. I’m going on various conversations that I’ve had with people over the last couple of years. Yes – that’s how long I’ve been ‘thinking’ about getting one but I hadn’t managed to get around to it. Until now. Until I took a visit to Riverford Organic Farm in Devon. I was invited on a press trip along with a group of bloggers and journalists. The email landed in my inbox entitled ’24 hours of wild garlic’ and before I even opened the email, I knew that whatever greatness lay inside the body of the email was going to appeal to me. And it sure did. The email was aptly titled, we were to leave London at 7pm on Friday evening and return at 8pm on Saturday evening. OK, so maybe we were away for 25 hours but I’ll blame that on the delayed train. The lovely ladies at Story PR provided us with an astounding …

The Fox & Anchor dinner and hotel stay

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I was invited to stay at The Fox & Anchor pub/hotel in Clerkenwell recently so on Friday, my boyfriend and I packed our bags and headed to this city boozer come boutique hotel for a meal, followed by an overnight stay. We arrived at the pub at 6.30pm and leaned over the bar to let the staff know that we had a room booked. They grabbed the key and told us how to get to our room. We wrestled past the Friday night city punters enjoying their end of the working week drinks and unlocked the door to walk upstairs. Our key told us that we were staying in ‘St. Bart’s’, which actually stands for St Bartholomew’s – one of London’s oldest churches. All six rooms above the Fox & Anchor pub have a name, rather than a number and we had the pleasure of being surrounded by Smithfield, Charterhouse, St Paul’s, Barbican and The Market Suite. I believe that all rooms are pretty similar, each comes with a king sized bed (with a picture …

Stockholm and Åre

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I arrived home from a wonderful holiday in Sweden at the weekend. We flew to Stockholm, had a whole day of shopping and then got the sleeper train up to the skiing resort Åre where we skied for 5 days before taking the sleeper train back to Stockholm for another day in the city. Having only come back from Australia 6 weeks ago, it was a shock to the system to suddenly be in a city that is -14 degrees. We trudged around stopping occasionally in little shops just to warm ourselves. It was absolutely freezing. Then we were in for even more of a shock – when we arrived in Åre it was -25degrees but it was such a beautiful place that I could forgive it! This holiday was certainly not a foodie holiday. When I say this, I mean that I wasn’t able to snoot out the best foodie destinations and this was because there aren’t many in Åre and I wasn’t in Stockholm for long enough! We did however eat a LOT …