JUSTIN Bieber and new squeeze Bronte Blampied have failed to keep a low profile after spending the night together at the pop star’s London pad. The Canadian singer has been joined by the pretty model while in the capital to perform at the annual V Festival, and while it was believed earlier this month that […]
WHAT Parenie (£28) and Russian massage (£35 for 30 minutes) WHERE Banya No.1, London, gobanya.co.uk THE LOWNDOWN Russian Banya is a full experience, not an in-out treatment, so if you’re in a rush, save this for another dy. After a relaxing cup of tea, you’ll be laid down in a steam room where the therapist uses birch, oak […]
Hanging out at a Rainbo event a few months ago my beautiful friend Alice told me she and her husband Pete were going on a hot date that evening to a Russian spa “where you wear and felt hat and they beat you with birch leaves”. Sign me up! I cried, and the next week […]
Kate Weinberg is massaged with twigs at a Russian bathhouse Photo: Paul Grover Banya involves being hit by branches and having a bucket of icy water chucked over your head. Kate Weinberg visits a bathhouse in London. It’s 9pm. I am lying face down on a wooden slab in a hot room, musing on how […]
I spent my gap year in Moscow learning Russian. With not a jot of the language to get by on and taken aback by the freezing weather, my world shrunk to calendar-watching and English-language books. It was a difficult experience by most measures. I stayed for the winter and left in spring when the snow […]