Crabtree & Evelyn
These are heavenly products from a shop that offers an amazing choice of gorgeous goodies. This travel pack includes a silky Body Wash, a hydrating Body Lotion and a Shampoo and Conditioner for Dry and Damaged Hair in plastic bottles just the right size for a trip. These products contain jojoba oil so condition and nourish skin and hair, but similar packs are available with products based on Aloe Vera or Crabtree & Evelyn’s ‘La Source’ range. Added bonus! They come in a tasteful purse that makes a great cosmetics bag and the packs make great gifts.
Price: €18.71
Available from: Crabtree & Evelyn, Tel: 25 370500
L’Occitane
These products are crammed full of high grade ingredients, plant extracts and essential oils. My trained aromatherapist’s nose could smell the quality in them straight away. But be warned, try them and you’ll become addicted. The comprehensive collection includes many travel sized versions, from beautiful smelling shampoo containing Lavender from Provence (€5.50) to shaving foam and this Almond collection, of which I tried the Delicious Paste (€9.50), a skin nourishing body exfoliator, the Milk Concentrate (€12.50), a smooth rich body cream and the Shower Oil (€6.50), which smelt amazing and becomes foamy in contact with water.
Available from: L’Occitane, 3 Makarios Avenue, Nicosia. Tel: 22 766260
Apivita
This brand has become very popular in Cyprus and produces a wide range of face, hair and body products based on or including natural ingredients and essential oils. They produce a good variety of face masks, from skin brightening to firming to deep cleansing, all in handy sachets. For extreme or hot weather holidays, the Calming Face Mask with Dittany of Crete or the Aqua Plus Face Mask with Cucumber are perfect to calm, desensitise or hydrate the complexion. For milder climate trips, try the Revitalizing Face Mask with Orange and the Eye Zone Mask with Ginko Biloba.
Available from: pharmacies island-wide
John Frieda Collection
If you need something to make your hair very shiny, smooth and moisturised or want to tame or prevent the frizzies or split ends, John Frieda’s Shine Shock and his famous Frizz Ease serum will do the job brilliantly and they come in perfect travel sizes. These two products will prevent humid weather from turning your locks into a monster from the loch look! Shine Shock even comes in different formulas to suit blond, brunette and other colour hair, which brings out the individual beauty and shine of your particular colour.
Price: €10.50 and €8
Available from: supermarkets and pharmacies
Sebastian
This brand of professional hair products is sold exclusively through hair salons and produces handy sized Shaper Plus Touchable Extra Hold Hairspray with Humidity Resistance. Perfectly sized for your handbag or overstuffed suitcase! The damaged hair treatment ‘Potion 9’ is produced in a smaller 50ml version so you can take it on trips to condition weather battered hair and is used like a conditioner but not rinsed out after application, hence its label ‘wearable treatment’. It contains nine exotic oils and extracts.
Price: €7.69 and €12.78
Available from: Tel: 22 879922 for nearest stockist
O.P.I.
This professional nail tech’s brand can be found in nail and beauty salons and hairdressing salons. Their cult status, rich Avoplex lotion (you’ll know it if you have your nails done), now comes in lighter, fruity versions named Avo Juice. You can get these fruity smelling hand lotions in dinky little bottles that don’t weigh your handbag down, which we all know can cause the medical syndrome called heavy handbag hunch.
Price: €2
Available from: Tel: 22 879922 for nearest stockist
Sally Hansen
These foot beautifying products are perfect for packing. They take up no room at all and contain enough product for several applications. I got five applications from a sachet of Just Feet Spa Foot Cream. Also in this sachet collection is a foot scrub called Pumice Cream and a Spa Foot Mask. The foot cream contains lavender and tea tree oil that although it goes on rich and creamy and really soothes parched skin, it absorbs to leave a matt and completely grease free finish, so you don’t get that slippery soles feeling as soon as you put your high heels on.
Price: €2.56
Available from: supermarkets and pharmacies
