Okay - where to start?  I guess, if nothing else, today has shown me why this website is a good idea!  I found Casa Spa (or Casablanca Spa on Edgware Road, London - near Maida Avenue - hence the cute photo) online - their website looks great and there were nothing but good reviews online, so I booked in for a traditional hammam.

To be honest if I wasn’t building the website I probably wouldn’t have made it there - as there were a few odd things before I even got there - but I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and go all the way!

When I rang to book in they asked me to email them - so that they could email me back with details.   So I did.  I got an email back the next morning, and they asked me to go online and buy a gift certificate for £50 and send them the reference code.  So I did.  I didn’t hear back from them - but just figured it would all work out okay.

In fairness, I must admit I do feel much better about the whole experience now I’m home.  I’ve just had a little detox nap and have that lovely heavy sleepy feeling that comes with massages and apparently hammams, and my skin feels great.  Casa Spa is the kind of place that you want to like - everyone there is so sweet and they are clearly trying so hard - but it’s just so wrong.

When I got there they really couldn’t find my booking - I’d already forwarded the details to my hotmail account, just in case, but eventually after searching through several times they found my email, which they hadn’t read yet.  I had asked about booking an extra massage or pedicure but at this point was kind of glad they missed that.

One of my thoughts on starting this website was that everywhere I recommend should be somewhere I could take my mum - could I take my mum here?  My mum would walk in, take one look and be out like a shot. 

It’s not horrible - just weird - hard chairs on a kind of platform as a waiting area.  Unfortunately I picked up a European Spa magazine - full of pictures of amazing spas... quite a difference.

Let’s start with the music  - I knew it was a bad sign when the first track was “Groovy Kind of Love” - on pan pipes.    The pan pipe murdering of tracks continued - at one point I was sitting in the hammam thinking that if I had to listen to “Ebony and Ivory” for one minute longer I was going to lose it. 

Anyway... in the email I’d been asked to bring along my bikini - fine by me, although personally I’d rather go naked.  So... I was shown down to the basement spa and told I could change - in the middle of a huge area, including the lockers, relaxation area, massage table, hammam, showers, and um... yes the staircase going up. 

But I did it - put all my stuff in the locker - and then found out there were no keys... is it me or can you really call them lockers if they don’t lock?

So then the very nice girl took me to the hammam - opened the door and kind of chucked me in.  I couldn’t see a thing - there was so much steam in there I was a bit scared, just about found a seat and perched on the edge.   Sat there for a bit, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a bucket of cold water landed on my feet.  I jumped out of my skin and thought, “right that’s it” and opened the door.  But the very nice girl laughed and brought me back in, with a bucket of water...

Apparently she hadn’t poured the cold water over my feet, something must have overflowed, but...

I have to tell you, in Morocco and Barcelona they did chuck a lot of water on me, but it was tepid - room temperature, they are not shy about chucking it over your head either - today, when she started slinging cold water over me - I really wondered what I had done wrong in a previous life - unpleasant.  In Morocco it was like having your hair washed by your mum when you were a kid, this… well this was more like being waterboarded.

Anyway we went on to a washing with black soap “savon noir”, then I got rinsed off with a hose pipe (thank goodness with warm water), another ghost soaking of my feet in cold water...

...and then the gommage (where I had to take my bikini off anyway), a good scrubbing with a gommage glove (which was quite pleasant), more rinsing with the hosepipe, another soaking with the ghost water which I managed to miss because I was actually sitting back on the bench, and then, thanks goodness as we were on to “Ebony and Ivory”, it was over!

At times I did get a glimpse of the hammam through the mists and it was quite cute.  What was not cute were the countless figurines in the relaxation area.  The bowl of fruit at the end was a sweet touch, but to be honest at this point I just really wanted to get out - when they played “Fernando” on pan pipes I nearly choked on my fruit.

Oh yes - and the icing on the cake of the weirdness that was today... sitting next to the door on the train, a very drunk lady stopped to tell me how lovely I smelled several times before she got off... okaaayyyyy.

Was it good value for £50?  Well as I was only there for 50 minutes, including time getting cold water thrown at me, sitting in a steam room, having a shower, eating fruit, and with ghost feet soaking, I’m going to have to say no.

Would I go back?  Hmmm... well it’s the kind of treatment you enjoy more the day after – my skin feels really soft and she did sort out that rough patch of skin on my back… so… you never know… but I doubt it!

The only reason I would go back is that there is a fab little cafe nearby, Cafe Laville, sitting right on the canal, great food, great service, great view (which is the photo), but it’s a little out of my way...

Oh yes… and to give my mum a good laugh again!