Alex wanted to take me away for a spa weekend.It sounded good to me. He suggested that we go to a place called Calistoga and made all the arrangements for our trip.
Alex arranged for us to have a "couple's mud bath", and massages and some kind of a seaweed something too. It never occurred to me that any of this would be very challenging for me.
Calistoga has natural hot springs and mineral water too. It's located in the wine country. It sounded wonderful.
We got there and I was a little horrified that the whole town smelled strongly of sulfur (make that rotten eggs). There were a lot of new age type places around our hotel and everybody looked very granola with hairy legs (men and women), and ugly sandals. We drove quite a while to get out of that smelly place for dinner, but we were still excited about out weekend away.
The next morning, we had a morning appointment for our mud baths. We went into a room where two bathtubs were side by side. filled with black slimy and smelly mud, and we were told to disrobe and get in to the baths. We were told we could either take our underwear off or leave it on if we wished. The idea of climbing into warm ooze was no longer appealing to me very much, but I wanted to be a "good sport". We undressed and figure to pull off the undies as well rather than ruin them in the mud. I did have a moment of trepidation when I considered that the mud goes everywhere. Ugh!
The attendant told us that the deeper we went into the mud, the warmer it would be. She left us in some privacy saying she would be back to check on us. As soon as she walked out of the room, Alex and I started laughing. This had to be the stupidest thing we had ever done. The harder we laughed, the deeper we sunk into the icky mud. I felt like I was in quicksand. After this refreshing and invigorating experience, we had a choice. We could let the attendant hose us off with mineral water (that smelled like rotten eggs) or we could shower by ourselves, in mineral water that smelled like rotten eggs. We opted for the do it yourself methodology.
Right after this, we were scheduled for a massage, but not a "couple's massage". The granola lady(masseuse) told me that she gave a "reflexology" massage. I said fine, but actually had no idea what the hell that was. I found out soon enough. This type of massage means that you pinch and push on every part of a human body that could possibly cause extreme pain for about 45 minutes. Gadzooks! I was glad when it was over.
The next fun thing was having seaweed stuck on me for a half hour. I don't think the seaweed numbed the soreness of the reflexology massage though, but it did make me smell funny for two days after.
They brought me a nice glass of rotten egg smelling mineral water after my treatments. Yum.
