Once again I allowed my unrealistic expectations to get the best of me. On a cruise with three other women, I thought going to the on-ship spa and salon would be like a scene from a 1940s movie. You know, the one where the rich socialite is being pampered in a spa while talking with her girlfriends on the nearby tables. They say dahling a lot. This was going to be great.
“Let’s get manicures!” someone said.
“Can I get a massage? I want a massage. And a margarita,” someone else said. “A massage at the same time as a margarita.”
“I always thought that if I could get a facial from a woman in a white lab coat with sitar music playing in the background, I would gladly die happy shortly afterward,” someone else said.
“We’re getting it all,” I said. “We’re getting facials, we’re getting manicures, we’re getting pedicures, we’re getting hot stones on our backs and cucumbers on our eyelids,” I said. I was picturing every black-and-white film I saw on the Nine O’Clock Movie when I was a kid.
And then I went to the appointment desk to arrange that little slice of nirvana. That’s where I learned the first rule of going to a spa when you’re on vacation. [Read more…] about Getting Real With the Vacation Spa