Inner-city Sydney escape

BY DIANA PLATER

The Four Seasons Hotel in Sydney is one of the few in the CBD where you can lie by the pool - outside.

Saturday morning, newspaper in hand, coffee by my side, I caught some sunshine and a relaxing swim.

Never mind the coffee was $NZ9.70- that's the punishment for staying at luxury hotels.

Our room was a corner one with an amazing view over Circular Quay, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Opera House.

Later on a seedy Saturday night it was a great place to escape to - and hide in - away from the real world.

We'd been to a free concert in the Domain as part of the Sydney Festival. And while you can only applaud offering free entertainment in the city - especially across so many different genres - the crowd at the event we went to wasn't quite as peaceful as you'd have hoped.

We opened a bottle of wine and watched a movie on TV - bliss.

We could have stopped off in The Bar downstairs where live jazz with well known international and Australian artists is played from Wednesday to Saturday nights.

We'd met friends there earlier in the night and had a pleasant round of cocktails and the evening before had shared a nightcap there after the theatre.

At night it's a place where locals and visitors relax, and during the day The Bar transforms into a meeting place. It's where I caught up with the hotel's Spa Manager Lucy Kennington for a cup of tea.

Many guests make the most of the hotel's spa and gym facilities, even going to the fitness centre in the middle of the night for a run on the treadmill to deal with jetlag, she says.

They're also available to the public and have become popular with people working in the city. The gym has a personal trainer on call.

Kennington describes the spa as a retreat within the city.

The spa uses Sodashi products from Western Australia as well as Elemis's professional spa and anti-ageing skincare range.

Its signature treatment, the Sodashi Crystalus Massage, uses a blend of stones known as ancient Australian healing stones and crystals. The Sodashi Tiger Iron Massage stones contain layers of Tiger Eye, Jasper and Hermatite.

Kennington says Sodashi designed this treatment exclusively for this spa, and it is "very earthy and very relaxing". And having had one of them, I'd have to agree.

The spa has an international team of therapists with a wide range of language skills and its clientele is mixed, from couples to businessmen and women to hen's groups.

It also offers treatments to counteract jet lag.

While hotels can never be perfect and I did hear a couple of complaints about the lifts being a bit slow, and the receptionists not as polite as they could be, overall I was impressed by the service. At one stage, the waiter was even polite when he thought I hadn't paid the bill!

Kable's restaurant - a fine dining eatery at night and for lunch - is frequented by many hotel guests, some eating alone with a book or newspaper.

It's the sort of place where you can do that - if you're in a strange city alone especially on business it's good to know you won't be harassed if you just want to have a nice meal in private.

The food was superb with a degustation or a la carte menu to choose from.

Its dishes include: Soft-cured ocean trout, sour cream, baby radish and fennel salad; Chateaubriand Rangers Valley 300-day grain fed Black Angus beef, chateau potatoes, king brown mushrooms, Bearnaise and red wine sauce and West Australian lobster thermidor, cherry truss tomato, and watercress salad.

In the morning, breakfast is served there - from fruit and Bircher muesli to freshly cooked pastries and bacon and eggs - it was pretty magnificent. (And overall haven't hotel breakfasts improved?)

The hotel has some packages that include breakfast, which normally costs around $54.

IF YOU GO:

Four Seasons Hotel Sydney is offering a Bed and Breakfast package from $485 per room per night which includes one night accommodation and an Australian breakfast for two in Kable's.

Subject to availability. Conditions apply.

Details: www.fourseasons.com/sydney or call (02)9250-3100.

The writer was a guest of Four Seasons Hotel Sydney and Tourism New South Wales.

- AAP