#StayInspired with Conrad Hotels

Hey everyone! It’s time I properly explained to you what I’ve been up to earlier this week together with Conrad Hotels. If you follow me on my social media channels you’ll know that I had a three days STAYCATION in London’s Conrad St. James. It’s the first time that I stayed in a hotel in London and it felt like I was a proper tourist. So let me tell you everything about this project!

At each one of their 24 global properties, Conrad Hotels now offers a new way to experience the city you are staying in. Based on whether you have 1,3 or 5 hours to explore you can now find perfectly tailored activities that will satisfy you interests and fit into your available timeline. I had the great pleasure of joining Conrad’s team and journalists from all over the world to experience some of the best 1,3 and 5 hours activities first hand. Conrad Hotels believe that one should never just stay, but stay inspired! And I definitely did.

Spearheading the #StayInspired initiative is Nilou Motamed, the luxury brand’s first ever Director of Inspiration, who is responsible for developing and implementing the Stay Inspired vision and what it means for travellers. As Director of Inspiration, Nilou has travelled to Conrad properties worldwide to create the initial series of Stay Inspired experiences. Catering to the modern traveler’s desire to merge work, life, and pleasure, StayInspired.com now offers experiences in convenient 1, 3, and 5 hour increments, or what the brand is calling the Conrad 1/3/5. Each Conrad 1/3/5 recommendation reflects an inspired view of each destination covering food, shopping, art and design, culture, family and adventure.

Scroll down to read about where we went and what we saw!

Day 1.

After a warm welcome and dinner the night before, our first Conrad 1/3/5 day started with a trip to London’s Tate Modern museum. Now I have to immediately point something out to you guys. Even though I have lived in London for more than 5 years now, Tate Modern was the only activity on our list that I had visited before. So I am not exaggerating when I say that this staycation was very inspiring and interesting and I definitely intend to go back to some of these places and show them to my friends. Which only highlights that the Conrad 1/3/5 really does uncover a cities’ best gems.

So, back to our visit to Tate Modern. Even though I have been there multiple times before this was my first time having a guided tour of it which was really helpful as the museum is so big and has so much to see that having someone taking you from room to room is great! After the tour we were back into our luxury #StayInspired transportation and headed for lunch.

We had lunch in London’s Pimlico area at Daylesford restaurant. This place was just awesome! First of all it looks really beautiful with it’s minimalistic interior and tasteful Christmas decorations. And second of all, Daylesford approach to food is really unique. It’s a fully organic restaurant with every ingredient coming from Daylesford farm in the Cotswolds. It also has a market shop right there in case you want to take some of this delicious and healthy food with you. I just had one question – how did I not know about this place before?

After our lunch it was time for the sweetest activity of the day – a visit to the Mast Brothers chocolate shop and factory in Shoreditch. I have anticipated this moment the entire day as I have never seen chocolate being made before. And it was so cool! We had a very detailed tour of the factory (which is right there in the shop), got to try the chocolate at its various steps of readiness and, finally, tasted 6 different flavours of the final product.

Our day then continued with a quick recharge and change of clothes in the Conrad St.James hotel before we headed out for some cocktails at Mr.Fogg’s and a Moroccan dinner at Momo’s. It was a whirlwind of delicious drinks and unforgettable, hearty food. And so there go two more places that I will be coming back to.

Day 2.

We started our day with a candle-making experience at Rachel Vosper candle shop in Belgravia. I’m literally obsessed with various scented candles but I have never tried making one myself. We spent the morning leaning the craft and each making our own candle (which is burning in my room right now). Listening to Rachel’s inspiring story of how she started her shop while learning from her was truly amazing.

After our DIY activity was over it was lunch time and we headed to the Bo Lang dim sum restaurant. I love dim sum and I surely don’t eat it often enough! So my belly was really happy! Even more so, when we got to meet dim sum master- Kai Wong. Doesn’t this food look delicious?

Our third stop of the day was at the National Theatre to watch Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’. I strongly suggest that you guys visit a play or a musical while in London as it has so many great choices to offer and we don’t seem to use the opportunities around us enough.

And so the time came for our final dinner with everyone who was involved into making Conrad 1/3/5 possible and who kept us inspired and entertained during those three days. The dinner and drinks reception were held at the stunning location – The Serpentine’s Gallery Magazine restaurant. I was really quite sad to say goodbye to the people I met but felt so grateful to be the part of something so big and innovative. I intend to explore Conrad 1/3/5 more even while being home in London. These two days gave me a preview of how much I still don’t know about this city and I can’t wait to get to know it better and, therefore, stay inspired!

You can download Conrad Concierge app on your phone to start exploring cities you are visiting as well as save and share your Conrad 1/3/5 itineraries, access custom content in the form of photos, videos and maps, or even book a room. You can also get more information by visiting www.StayInspired.com.

Follow Conrad Hotels on Instagram and Twitter too.

Thank you for having me, Conrad!

Julia xo

*In collaboration with Conrad Hotels