I’ve often wondered what it must be like to be a celebrity – flitting in and out of glam destinations, staying at plush hotels and hobnobbing with the who’s who.
Recently I got to find out. Sure, it was only 24 hours but hey, I still got to experience what the folks at Top Billing call “a taste of the good life”.
The occasion was the media launch of SABC 3’s health and wellbeing show Life’s a Journey, now in its second season. And the plan was a day and a half of blissful pampering, A-list-style.
“Yay for me,” I thought as I filled in my details and begged my editor to let me out the office during our very busy pre-festive season deadlines. Unfortunately there was too much going on to make the – gulp! – 6:45am flight from Joburg to Cape Town and I missed out on a trip to Hermanus and a winefarm (see how dedicated we are here at YOU!).
But no matter, the organisers, Radox, put me on a later flight, and I arrived in time for a quick freshen-up in my room at the palatial Crystal Towers hotel by Canal Walk, where you push a button and the TV pops out of the wooden unit at the foot of the bed.
For dinner, we were whisked off to celebrity chef Jenny Morris aka the Giggling Gourmet. And what a dinner it was!
Life’s A Journey being a show that celebrates and nurtures mind, body and spirit, meant that the dinner needed to reflect that too. No greasy chips! Instead we dined on salmon and a frozen berry dessert.
Salmon, explained Jenny (who’s quite a character by the way; if you’re ever in the Waterkant area, pop by her famous cooking school!) is full of healthy omega-3s while berries are chockablock full of antioxidants. Am sure Nigella would’ve approved!
We ate well. And by ‘we’, I mean a select handful of media peeps, plus the show’s down-to-earth presenter Zuraida Jardine, the producer Alan Ford, who you might have recently also seen as one of the judges on Top Billing’s new presenter search, Liezel van der Westhuizen, Jen Su and Claudia Henkel.
Some of us opted for a night on the town while others went back to the hotel to be awake bright and early for a round of pampering in the spa.
I’d booked a full-body massage (yay!) followed by 30 minutes of lazing in the salt-water flotation tank (double yay!), where you lie suspended and very, very relaxed in a pool of super-salted water. Apparently an hour of floating is the equivalent of a full night’s sleep...siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh!
Man, if this is the celeb life, I could get used to this!
With Liezel van der Westhuizen