My Spa Week-Days

I recently went on a little trip of my own, admittedly not cross-country like Jeanne, but only a few hours upstate into Napa Valley for a two-night spa retreat. The Silverado Resort has a charming, if slightly bloated and rosy manor feel to it, albeit with "condos" available to guests and the hotel attendants driving around in golf carts and Ray-Bans. During the week, the hotel-spa was just quiet enough for us to relax and drink in the beautiful (if unseasonably) warm weather and orange sunsets over the hills every evening. Several swimming pools are scattered around the grounds, and believe me, swimming at dusk with a view of Napa is nothing to sneeze at.

The purpose of this little getaway was to renew and refresh a couple of slowly burning out minds and have a real spa treatment to boot. She chose the Lavender Sugar Scrub with a massage, while I had a gorgeous Ginger-Cinnamon-Tangerine Wrap with jasmine face, scalp, and foot massage. Oh, my goodness, it was like being slathered in a giant bowlful of gingersnap cookie dough and curling up in a pile of fluffy towels fresh out of the dryer. One of the goals of this wrap nonsense, I gather, is to break a sweat without feeling completely claustrophobic and deathly, and the fifty-minute treatment was right on the money. Just as I was starting to feel uncomfortably warm and constricted, I was brought a glass of cool water (flavored with fresh pineapple, other areas of the spa had cucumbers and basil leaves, YUM). If you're worried about nudity in front of strangers as I was, the spa will provide you with disposable "privacy panties"--despite my shyness, I had to decline, as wearing a diaper in front of another woman would be more embarrassing than nudity. Anyway, you are covered at all times with nubbly warm towels, no worries to be had!

I asked for a "Make-Up Consultation" in addition to the spa treatment, in a never-ending effort to increase my cosmetic prowess, so in my state of complete relaxation and ginger-y deliciousness I was led off by an older, gangly redheaded Tammy Faye Bakker lookalike who immediately looked displeased with my sweaty countenance. She informed me that the Make-Up Consultation was usuallly done for brides about to be married at the resort--gee, thanks for telling me that when I booked it, Silverado. Taking a cue from one of Jeanne's recent makeover adventures, I had brought with me a small make-up bag containing the cosmetics I'll wear if it's absolutely necessary that I don't just wash my face and go somewhere: two Neutrogena MoistureShine lipglosses (in Chic and First Blush), Benetint Lip Balm, Nars eyeshadow in Nepal, Neutrogena Weightless Volume mascara in black, Prestige Let Loose eyeshadow in purple, and Benefit Dallas face powder. When I asked her for advice on how to use what I had to make myself look pretty, she looked befuddled and said she'd never had to do that kind of thing before, sort of rifled through my stuff, and then began to apply a crazy brown eyeshadow from her merchandise. The concealer was even worse--yellow, cakey, and managed to make the normal insomniac circles under my eyes look like deep pools of slate-grey mud. They do this to brides? Unbelievable. Of course, as has every make-up artist I have encountered, she finally applied fifteen coats of mascara to my eyelashes to form me into a reasonable fascimile of herself, which in this case was a spikey, zombie-eyed version of Tammy Faye.

That said, the make-up consultation was really the only unpleasant part of the trip. The fitness room was superb, with weight machines that were so comfortable they felt as if I was lifting clouds through the air. The outdoor heated pool at the spa was surrounded by a ring of blooming trees, and several hawks soared overhead while we swam in the afternoon warmth. Until I got all that nasty make-up off, showered in their swanky all-amenities-provided bathing rooms, and dried out in the sauna, I'd never felt so healthy and refreshed in my entire life.

An additional bonus was the adorable little Thai restaurant we discovered a five-minute drive away from the resort, Thai Kitchen on Trancas Avenue--their grilled vegetable platter was to die for; sliced potatoes, zucchini, carrot, onions, eggplant, and whole mushrooms with a lime-basil-garlic sauce that we wanted to drink straight out of the bowl. All in all, a getaway to Napa with delicious food and delicious spa treatments (I could drink that pineapple water for the rest of my life) doesn't need any wine to perfect it, and I did end up getting some school reading done!