Easter Weekend & A Trip to Blue Mountain

Hi everyone, happy Easter to you all. I thought I’d do a quick blog post about my Easter weekend and what we got up to, and what we ate!

Myself and Phil decided to get away from the city for a day and Good Friday was the

perfect day to do it as we had the day off. We rented a car on Thursday evening and hit the road early Friday morning (8.00am). After a lot of humming and hawing the previous week about where we would go, we settled on Collingwood and Blue Mountain, only a short 2 hour drive from Toronto. We had an ice storm last week but as we got near Collingwood we realized that they had got hit far worse. There was still some snow on the ground and they had got a lot of freezing rain. *Side note, for those of you who don’t know what freezing rain is let me explain, myself and Phil had not heard of freezing rain until we got to Canada. It’s precipitation falling as rain but because the ground surface temperature is so cold, the rain freezes immediately on impact, resulting in everything being covered in a thick layer of ice*.  That thick layer of ice covering everything made the place look spectacular, as the sun shone down, everything glistened and sparkled, it really was beautiful.We headed straight for the Scandinave Spa as we wanted to try out the baths, when we first arrived they told us there was a four-hour wait (you can’t reserve a spot at the baths) so we went back into Collingwood to grab a coffee and decide what we would do while waiting but luckily they text us within an hour saying that a spot had opened up….yipppeee!

I was very excited about the baths, and with good reason as it turned out they were amazing! The baths are all outdoors and as soon as you step outside you feel relaxed. It’s totally quiet as you are surrounded by wilderness, except for the quiet relaxing music they have playing on speakers all around, and you are told to keep the talking to a quiet whisper. We picked the perfect day for it because although it was cold, and there was still snow and ice on the ground, that made it all the more beautiful. There are three hot baths, all of varying temperatures, three cold baths – or plunge pools, again, each one is a different temperature, a steam room and a sauna. You can also have massages there but we just stuck to the baths (you pay extra for the massage). It was $55 per person for the baths, and once you’re in you can stay as long as you want. We were there for about 2 and a half hours. The idea is that you spend 10-15 minutes in a hot bath, steam room or sauna, and then plunge into the freezing temperature for 3-10 seconds, then relax and repeat as many times as you want. They have relaxation rooms where you can lie down and chill out. It was glorious, so relaxing and my skin felt amazing after it. The eucalyptus steam room was the best steam room I have ever been in, it was so steamy you literally couldn’t see anyone else in there (be careful not to sit on anyone’s lap when you enter!) and it was seriously hot in there. Plunging into to the freezing baths was so refreshing after bringing your body temperature up so high, although it’s very difficult to dunk your head under such cold water! I would highly recommend the Scandinavian baths to anyone who hasn’t tried them, if you fancy a few hours of serious relaxation then get yourself there ASAP! You can check it out here:http://www.scandinave.com/en/bluemountain/scandinavian-baths/

While I’m on the topic of relaxation I must mention something I recently tried, and LOVED – Floating! Floating is exactly what it sounds like, you float on water. Most places that offer floating have floating pods or private rooms, I went for the private room option. The room is pretty large and has a shower and your bath for floating. Everything is set at body temperature; the room and the water. The bath is like a giant tub, only it’s filled with epsom salts so that rather than sitting into the water, you lie back and float on top of it, like a mini version of the dead sea! You can dim the lights or plunge yourself into complete darkness, listen to the relaxation music playing in the room, or bring your own music, lie back and float into oblivion for an hour. It was fabulous, one of the most relaxing hours I have ever had on this earth. Because the water is the same temperature as your body, and you’re floating on top of it, after a while you almost forget your floating and your body and the water seem as one. It’s a very hard feeling to describe but I loved it, and again it’s excellent for your skin as well as your entire body. I went to H2O float spa and for anyone in Toronto, I highly recommend it. It’s $79 for an hour of floating, and while that may seem expensive, it is definitely worth it. Also I think they offer float packages for $49 Monday – Friday: http://www.h2ofloatspa.com/

The rest of our Easter weekend was a quiet and lazy one filled with eating nice food. As

part of my #3030vision I have been trying to learn how to bake new things, and I must say I’m progressing nicely. Before I started my #3030vision I could only bake chocolate chip muffins, now, my repertoire includes brown bread, toffee chocolate gems and lemon square biscuits. I just tried the lemon square biscuits this weekend and they came out beautifully! I have lots more baking to do though, but I must say I never knew how enjoyable baking could be. Next on my list is to learn to make chocolate mudcake… but when I learn to make that I will have to limit it to special occasions because otherwise that’s all I’ll want to eat!

For Easter dinner I wanted to make a nice roast, something I haven’t done since we moved to Canada. We bought silverside beef roulade with spinach and swiss cheese in the middle and I cooked that along with roast potatoes,veg and gravy. I’m always worried about making roast potatoes as it’s so hard to get them just right, but they turned out perfectly; deliciously crispy on the outside and beautifully golden and crumbly on the inside. The dinner was a success overall and it washed down nicely with a glass of red wine. Of course for desert we had some chocolate bunnies that we bought at the Belgian chocolate shop Leonidas, and as usual, the chocolate they produce is melt-in-your-mouth wonderful.

That’s all for now. Until next time 🙂