Soma Bay

You’ve seen my MATCHESFASHION.COM shoot and the two deliciously summery Look Du Jour posts (not to mention a whole lot of shameless social media) and now it’s finally time to share my Soma Bay travel diaries! Judging from every single email I’ve received and person I’ve seen since our return, a couple of days frolicking on sandy beaches and lounging by infinity pools turned me and Nik into shamelessly smug over sharers. Actually that’s total rubbish. We’d posted 25 no doubt deeply obnoxious snapchats before we even got on the plane…

Day 1.

As I mentioned in my tale of the Dsquared2 store launch festivities, I made the wholly unsurprising move of hitting the town the night before an early flight. Predictable? Yes. High risk? Certainly. As a result I arrived at the Gatwick Express unshowered and half an hour late to find Nik taking what I believe was a video of himself. Thanks to an undeserved dose of luck we made it to the airport with time to check in, buy a bunch of stuff we didn’t need or really want plus a crime novel and a stack of magazines before boarding the plane. You know when you went on holiday as a child and got so over excited during the journey there that you annoyed the crap out of everyone anywhere near you and exhaust yourself in the process? That was us on this flight. All thoughts of “knuckling down to some work” went straight out of the window and we spent the flights giggling like teenagers and making up retrospectively embarrassing hashtags – #somabae #slaycation… the list goes on – before pretty much losing it over the epic awesomeness of the desert from above. The desert is just SO FREAKING COOL! I want to go back and experience more of it as soon as physically possible.

We arrived at Soma Bay late afternoon having just about resisted the urge to ask our driver to stop in the middle of the desert so we could get out and take pictures, I feel this would have caused understandable confusion. Soma Bay is a peninsula bordered by the Red Sea in the East of Egypt totally 10 million square metres of prisine sandy beaches, palm trees, never ending blue skies and mind blowing views of the desert and mountains. There are five luxury resort hotels within the community and our home for the next six days would be La Residence des Cascades. Semi unpacked in our adjoining rooms, we took a dip in the hot tub and a glass of delicious local rosé by the pool before slinging a quick outfit change before dinner.

I wore: Whistles top, House of Holland skirt, Next sandals & Angel Jackson bag

Nik wore: Ada + Nik

The idea of a “buffet” can conjour up notions of tables groaning in all-you-can eat junk but my recent experiences of the Middle East have taught me that buffets can in fact be total genius. This one cooked up some of the tastiest grilled fish I’ve experienced plus steak, assorted local dishes, endless delectable canapés, an unlimited supply of juicy olives (I’m literally addicted to olives so got very excited by these) and the kind of desert assortment that would be anyone with a sweet tooth’s ultimate dream. Then it was time to retire to our rooms where we danced very badly to truly terrible music I played on my basically useless laptop speakers. This, as you may have gathered, became a recurring theme of the trip.

Day 2.

Day 2 was SPA DAY! I literally never do spa days so couldn’t wait to kick back and enjoy some pampering. The Thalasso Spa at Residence des Cascades is a should-be-illegal level of relaxing. Well, except for the Thalasso treatment itself which basically involves moving around an enormous salt water pool with jets pummelling different parts of your body as you stop in different places under the instruction of your guide who, in our case, was the incredibly patient Ahmed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a brilliant treatment but never, under any circumstances to be done while wearing an incredible expensive and rather fragile Heidi Klein bikini. I was stupid enough to do exactly this and spent a lot of our Thalasso time wrought with paranoia over potentially stretching it. Fool, fool, fool. Still, it was such a cool experience. Major props to lovely Ahmed for firstly putting up with us being very immature throughout and secondly for taking about a hundred pictures for us, most of which were actually really very good.

After the Thalasso we were treated to THE BEST massages. God, I wish I could get a massage every week. This one was one of the most wonderful I’ve ever had and it took every ounce of self discipline to haul my zenned out self off the bed afterwards and stagger off to lunch. I did manage it though which was lucky as the Vitamin Chicken Salad at The Spikes outdoor restaurant was utter perfection. So much so that I ordered it every day.

I wore: Mint Velvet kaftan & espadrills, Heidi Klein bikini (pictured above), Donna Ida customised tote and Kurt Geiger sunglasses

An afternoon of lounging by the pool, taking pictures of each other (for work purposes, obvs), swimming, gymming and intermittently popping back to our laptops to make a half arsed attempt at doing something productive, it was time for dinner. We would be checking out the Bamboo Shoot restaurant at The Kempinski Hotel and had been promised a meal to remember. This was no word of a lie and we gorged on mouthwatering dished from around Asia accompanied by (possibly too much) fine wine and finished off with deep fried ice cream. I could deal with eating the whole meal again every night but would probably have to wave goodbye to my J Brands if that particular wish came true.

I wore: Elizabeth & James crop top, Valentino bag, Kurt Geiger sandals

I was planning on splitting my Soma Bay diaries into two posts but given that we’re about to hit 1000 words and God knows how many images, I think three may be more likely. For future reference, do you guys enjoy my very, very long, multiple post, million image travel tales? I’d hate to think I was boring you!

Love Ella. X