30 April 2010 - Night away

A few weeks/months ago I won a competition which included a night's stay and extras at the 5-star Peermont D'Oreale Grande Hotel at the Emperor's Palace complex. So for the 2nd time in almost six years Ed and I slept out without the kids. My in-laws looked after them, which I am ever so grateful for.

So off we went to "see how the other half lives" and checked into our hotel room on Friday afternoon. After chilling out a bit we go ready for dinner, which was a fully-paid meal at Tribes, a fantastic "African" steakhouse. The meal was fabulous and it was so nice to just be able to sit and talk without any interuptions :). After dinner we tried our luck at the slots in the casino, but lady luck was not on our side and we gave up after R100.

On the Saturday, after a glorious lie-in, we made our way to breakfast. Now dinner was amazing, but breakfast was a total wow! Luckily we only had to be out of our room at 11am, so we rolled back there and relaxed until then.

The final part of the prize was a couples full-body Swedish massage. Off we then went to Octavia's Sensorium where we hung around in the roman baths until we were called for the massage. Another absolutely amazing experience - quite a nice for Ed too who was a massage virgin before this :). Swedish showers, sauna and steam room sessions ended our time and our break-away.

It was so lovely to reconnect with my husband again and relax a bit. Worst of all is we rushed home to the kids and ends up they did not even miss us - maybe we can try this again sometime.......

Our room

Ed

Me

The view from our room

The roman bath

Elton John concert - 21 March 2010

I was fortunate enough to win tickets through a local radio station to the Elton John concert "under African skies" held in Johannesburg on Sunday evening. We had 4 tickets and Jenny and Clyde came with Ed and myself. It was a picnic-style concert which was lovely and so relaxed.

As for the show itself all I can say is WOW! I love his music and I love it even more now that I have had the opportunity to see him live. he is a real show-man and is absolutely brilliant at what he does!

There were 12 000 people at the concert and we ended up getting fabulous seats close to the front (about 80m from the stage) and had a clear view of everything.

He played for over 2 1/2 hours solid (no breaks) and was amazing. The crowd was wonderful and it was generally a lot of fun.