Victoria Therapy Suite: The Epitome of Anti-Cool

In this age of ‘budget boutique’ hotels that pride themselves on shab-chic, The Park Plaza Victoria doesn’t quite keep up with the style set. Sure it’s comfortable in a conservative, corporate, non-descript kinda way, and well-equipped with conference and guest rooms. It provides a place of quiet repose after a day pounding London’s pavements. But it’s not hip, and it’s definitely not rock ‘n’ roll. Here you’re more likely to find American tourists donning matching rucksacks and pastel sweaters (oh-so-casually draped over the shoulders) than the Primrose Hill set trashing TVs and snorting coke off grand pianos.

But if you wanna unwind there’s a pretty heavenly little health spa tucked away in the hotel’s basement. It’s nothing to match Agua at The Sanderson – with its dainty, white-curtained, cloud-like ambience – but it offers no-end of remedies tailored to de-stress and revive.

Victoria Therapy Suite has a sauna, steam and relaxation area, and two therapy rooms offering Swedish, traditional Chinese acupressure and lymphatic drainage massages, as well as a full range of beauty treatments including facials, manicures, pedicures, body wraps and hand and foot healing.

From the hotel lobby head downstairs via the lift to the third basement where the gym is, past the pent up, off-duty office workers hammering the treadmills like little rodents on running wheels, and there you’ll be greeted by one of those opaque glass cube walls that were big in bars in the ‘80s (think Cocktail), which borders a secluded therapy area behind reception. The whole look is pretty dated with white towels draped over cane chairs and trance tunes blaring from tinny speakers, but the Victoria experience is not about décor or sound systems, today it’s all about my 30-minute Swedish massage.

After completing the prerequisite consultation form (name, address, medical history…yadda yadda yadda) my polite therapist, Alina, whisks me off to a darkened den where I bask for half an hour in aromatherapy-oiled heaven as she kneads my back and shoulders like putty in her hands. Hunching over a computer all day means I’m about as relaxed as a paedophile in a playground, but with Alina’s healing touch I drift off into a state of bliss for one precious half hour. Who needs a pretentious hotel suite when you can have sweet relaxation?

A 30-minute Swedish massage costs £30.00

Victoria Therapy Suite
Park Plaza Victoria London
239 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 1EQ

Tel: 020 7769 9885

thefitnesssuite@pphe.com
www.victoriatherapysuite.com