Why we finally went
We’d been keen to check out Alba Thermal Springs & Spa, a very luxurious hot spring resort on the Mornington Peninsula, for ages. What finally got us off the couch and into the car was a two for one deal running through August, and well, who doesn’t love a bargain? We took the Thursday off work, highly recommend a midweek escape by the way, and made the drive down to Fingal. I’d genuinely never heard of Fingal before this trip, turns out it’s a tiny little place on the peninsula, home to only a few hundred people.
First impressions
Honestly, you get it the second you walk in. This is clearly the spot where the well known crowd goes to hide from the rest of us. The building is all curved, board formed concrete, and it makes most other hot springs look like your local public pool by comparison. My partner reckoned the whole thing looked like the Power Rangers headquarters, and he meant it as the highest compliment. He was humming the theme song under his breath for a good chunk of the day. Probably not what the designers had in mind, but it worked on him.
Alba’s no-phone policy
We did the right thing and popped our phones and smart watches straight in the locker for the day, no cheating. A fair few people around us clearly hadn’t got that memo though, phones were still doing the rounds. I get why they ask all the same. Between the minerals in the water and the heat, I can’t imagine electronics love that environment much, and there’s not much point trying to switch off if you’re checking notifications between soaks. I actually thought they were going to be policing this somehow, but then again, if they did, how would influencers make content here?
The change room
The first proper giggle of the day came in the change room. You hand your stuff over, get a towel and a white robe, and suddenly everyone around you is dressed exactly the same. Couples, mates, people clearly celebrating something, all wandering around looking like they’ve checked into the world’s calmest hospital. Took me a solid few minutes to stop staring.
Getting separated, the hard way
Turns out the matching robes and no phones combo has an unexpected downside though. When my partner wandered off to find a bathroom, he properly got lost among the maze of paths, and with no way to text ‘where are you’, it took him a good ten minutes longer than it should have to find his way back. First world problems, but it does show how much we normally rely on just being able to call each other. If you look at the aerial photo above, it shouldn’t be that hard, but the place is deceptively large and some areas do look similar to each other!
Lunch at Thyme
We did break the no phone rule briefly, but only because Thyme, Alba’s on-site restaurant, needs your phone to pay for lunch. Barely scrolled the whole time though, ordered, paid, and had them straight back in our lockers before we headed back to the pools. The only photos we’ve got from the entire day are of our lunch, which pretty much sums up where our heads were at.
First up, the ‘karaage’ chicken, with baby corn, sweet gochujang, wombok and crushed popcorn. I wasn’t expecting the popcorn to do much, but it wasn’t really about crunch, it brought this unusual, genuinely good texture and flavour I hadn’t had with fried chicken before.
My partner went for the glazed beef short rib, with a hot and sour tamarind date sauce and salt baked local mushrooms. Zero complaints from him, plate practically licked clean.
The pools
The pools are obviously the main event, and moving between the warm geothermal ones and the cold plunges over a few hours does exactly what it’s supposed to. Because of the deal, the place was absolutely heaving, and we were glad we’d got there early, there was barely a car park left by the time we were leaving. At one point I overheard a staff member mention there were over a thousand people booked in for the day, which certainly tracked with how it felt. There was a group of about eight girls who rocked up at the same time as us, and later in the day I overheard one of them loudly wondering why on earth it was so busy. We had a good laugh about that one later, given she was almost certainly there for the exact same two for one deal as the rest of us.
It’s a common theme in other reviews I’ve read too, people always comment that you can never quite tell how warm each pool actually is. I don’t really know how it works, but being outdoors, I’d guess the weather makes it tricky to keep every pool at a constant temperature, though surely some run hotter than others regardless. My tip, and it’s not exactly scientific, is to keep an eye on which pools are pulling the biggest crowd rather than diving straight into one. Let everyone else be your guinea pig, work out which one’s actually worth it, then swoop in once things thin out a bit. You’d feel like a bit of a weirdo piling into the busiest pool when there’s clearly space in others nearby, though on a day as packed as ours, most of them ended up pretty full regardless.
Final thoughts
We left feeling looser than we’ve felt in ages, which isn’t something I can usually say about a day out. Crowds and all, it was a genuinely great way to spend the day, and that two-for-one deal made saying yes an easy decision. Honestly though, I’d go back even at full price.
