A Little bit of Luxury...

Today was a day filled with luxury from start to finish.  What a lucky girl am I????

My morning began down in Polis at Beauty by Kate and instead of my usual facial I was treating my poor old feet to a pedicure in one of the luxury massaging pedicure seats in the salon.

My feet get a pounding - they are normally either in flipflops or boots - rarely in shoes these days even though I still love a high-heel!!!  Unfortunately the roads and pavements here aren't conducive to wearing FMS's and, if we go out somewhere special there is likely to be music and if there is music I love to dance and if I dance I cannot wear a heel!

So poor Kate got the dubious pleasure of dealing with my grotty old plates - I asked her if she minded working on feet and she said she loved them and she loved spots - there is no accounting for taste!!

My feet were scrubbed and rubbed and soaked and smoothed and massaged and loved and my toenails were painted and glitzed with some bling and it was wonderful.

Kate is an amazingly interesting person and she looks far too young to have three children.  When her husband Dem was working abroad she juggled their upbringing with her career and did a tremendous job of both.  At the moment she is trying to raise awareness regarding Breast Cancer as a tribute to her gran who has breast cancer for a second time - she is having a massive raffle and I have donated one of my creations as a prize.

I was almost reluctant to move from the massage chair it was such a treat but I had to go as John and I had another special treat to look forward to later this afternoon...

On the way home we stopped off at John and Susan's as we were feeding their cat Millie again today.

As we got out of the car we could hear her little miaow coming from the terrace which was good because we always like to see her if we are looking after her.

I don't know if she had been playing with the Praying Mantis that I found by the table - it was enormous and I thought it was dead but it just seemed to be nursing a rather poorly front leg.  John managed to get it to crawl onto a broom and then he put it on a shrub.  This is possibly one of the largest preying mantis's I have ever come across.  I hope it survives with its poorly
leg - John seems to think they can shed them and they re-grow.

We stayed a little while with Millie making sure she had a bit of love and a cuddle although John looks like he is strangling her in this photograph!  Against our four she is a tiny wee cat and she is always so pleased to see us - she is more interested in a cuddle than eating!

John and Susan will return at some point tomorrow so once Zak the dog comes home it will be back to normal for Millie.

This afternoon we were going down to the Elysium hotel to indulge in a little afternoon tea with Mum and Dad and Wendy and Bill.  Mum's great friend Eileen had bought Mum a voucher for her 80th birthday which was afternoon tea for two.  Mum didn't want to go in May as it was a bit hot for cream tea so she left it until now and asked Wendy and Bill to join us as they hadn't been around for her birthday or Mum and Dad's diamond wedding anniversary.

The Elysium is one of the most beautiful hotels in Paphos - obviously we haven't been into them all but this is generally considered to be the creme de la creme.  Mum and Dad were lucky enough to stay their overnight back in May courtesy of their lovely friends Jane and John who treated them.  They really enjoyed the experience so were looking forward to going back even if it was only for tea.

We assembled in the lobby before deciding on whether we wanted to sit indoors our outdoors.

We decided to take the huge comfy lemsip seats indoors as Dad thought it might be too sunny outside and he had dressed for the occasion and left his Liam Gallagher hat at home.

Mum had been in and booked and told them about her dietary requirements so they provided her with her own cake stand full of goodies.

I would thoroughly recommend a visit to the Elysium for afternoon tea - it costs €22.95 for two people and for that you get a delicious selection of sandwiches and cakes.  On the bottom tier we had salmon and cream cheese sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches, cheese and ham sandwiches and egg mayonnaise sandwiches on the middle tier there were caramel profiteroles, strawberry and cream tartlets, chocolate truffles, meringues, chocolate praline logs and some sort of delicious cream mousse finger thingies.  On the top tier were beautiful scones with jam and cream.  John shared a corking pot of tea and this came with a plate of little macaroon biscuits.

What we couldn't manage they kindly packed away in little boxes and packed into a carrier bag for us to take home.  It was lovely and we all enjoyed it immensely.

Whilst the boys chewed the fat or more likely checked out their eyelids in the squashy chairs Mum, Wendy and I went for a walk around the hotel and its beautiful grounds.

This really is a very special hotel - the decor is outstanding and there are so many different areas all beautifully staged.

It was eventually time to leave and as we reluctantly left we were treated to an outstanding sunset.  This is good news because we should have a dry day tomorrow which means that Tony the painter should be able to start on the outside of the house and the forecast looks settled enough over the next few days for him to be able to get the job done before it rains.

We were still full when we got home so neither of us wanted any tea!  For a while Boris was missing and I was worried because we had had people here earlier having a look at the pool and he does have a habit of going into people's vehicles plus the people at 2B are having a new front door and the workmen were there earlier so there is always a danger that he could get shut inside - eventually John went out to find him and after a little while he came sauntering in thank goodness.