To think a ‘spa day’ sounds pretty miserable, really?

[53rdWay]

I just do not get why these are supposed to be relaxing. Or why they’re the MN cliche recommendation for frazzled mothers especially. People massaging you! And faffing around with your fingernails and toenails! And plastering your face in goo! If I wanted to be touched all the time and have yoghurt rubbed into my face I could just stay at home with my children.

I know different people like different things and all (although if you disagree with me you are objectively wrong obvs), but are there other people who shudder at the very thought of spa treatments?

I love a spa day. I love being touched. Particularly love a couples spa day.

I usually go to the gym and sweat it out and then I’ll swim a load of lengths and then relax for an hour with a book and then normally for an all over body massage.

I bloody love them. A good one is immense. There are a lot of shit ones though.

Have done a few. They can be nice with friends. Did a proper Russian (?sp) bagna with a friend a few years ago - all being thwacked with birch twigs, wearing odd woolly hats in the sauna (why?) and being pummelled and covered in coffee grounds by a muscular lady whilst wearing paper knickers (me, not her) and trying to figure out the Russian for ‘excuse me, I am about to slide off this marble slab.’ It was all good clean fun, and they served us an enormous and strangely comforting bowl of potatoes for lunch. I’ve also done floatation tanks a few times but not sure that counts as a spa day?

But what part of being thwacked with birch twigs, having a in a woolly hat and then being pummelled and covered in coffee grounds while wearing paper pants is actually fun? It sounds miserable and uncomfortable, if not actually painful!

it actually WAS therapeutic in a sort of medieval fashion, *Weskit^. Bit like the torments of heretics with the hot stones?

Lol at sitting around in a damp room in a dressing gown! Yes that WOULD be miserable but far from the truth
And for those who are fretting that people may catch a glimpse of their shaving preferences, you do know you have a swimming costume on at all times?

I've been once or twice...not really my thing, although I have enjoyed a massage, reflexology etc..
Whenever I have had any treatments, or even just going in the jacuzzi, I get really unwell over the following week...which kind of takes away from the point of going!

My equivalent to a spa day would be a lovely walk somewhere in inspiring countryside with a scrumptious picnic provided by someone else.

A lovely walk followed by amazing lunch and a few cocktails and an early night would be amazing.

I enjoy the stranger touching - head massage, hot oil massage, sound baths and meditation. Looooove it.

They are lovely! I used to go every two months to the most incredible one in London, so luxurious they have heated loungers where you can lie with a book, sleep pods, swimming pools, saunas, steam plus beautiful treatment rooms where I had a two hour massage. I love being touched 😂 the whole place had roaring fires and dim lighting was so tranquil - I honestly don't know what you can't enjoy about that?

This was before I had a baby 😔

This thread has made me decide I definitely need a spa day soon, will book one today :)

Can anyone recommend a good one in Yorkshire

Rudding Park or depending on where you are, Center Parcs Sherwood Forest or Woodland in Burnley are also close enough. Of those 3, I like CP best, then Woodland, then RP, which is lovely, but expensive and was full of pretentious types drinking very expensive champagne last time I went.

If lazing about in hot bubbly water and steam rooms is your thing, you want a proper spa rather than a hotel spa.

But what I don't understand is why people like the OP post 'I don't understand why people like spa days' and then go on to post a load of crap that is nothing like a spa day at all. Treatments are not compulsory, in fact they cost (a lot) extra and just the basic entrance to the facility is what I want, with lunch and wine. Go to one with good outdoor space on a sunny day and it's like being in an exclusive beach club for the day.

It's like when people say 'package holidays are shit' and then go on to talk about cheap all inclusive holidays in places like Benidorm, missing the point that a package holiday is simply a way of booking accomodation, transfer and flight all in one go and could equally be nice SC accomodation in a quiet area, a villa etc.

I sometimes go and get a hot stone facial from a local lady I know. It's lovely and soothing and she works from home in a quiet private room, just me and her.

And I like floating round by myself in (hot country) open air swimming pools or reading, half submerged.

But the idea of parading round in gappy dressing gowns/swimwear in some kind of enclosed prison with all the other other convicts for days on end? AND charging a fortune for it as well? Highly unappealing.

Maybe other people like different stuff to you? Is it really that hard to understand? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Treatments are not compulsory, in fact they cost (a lot) extra and just the basic entrance to the facility is what I want, with lunch and wine.

But what exactly are you going for, then, if not treatments? Lunch, swimming and lying around with a book all sound to me like things much better enjoyed separately.

@gobbynorthernbird @BarbaraofSeville thank you!

Yes it is, Oblomov. Entirely beyond my comprehension. Like people who nibble the chocolate off KitKats.

There is no other way to eat a KitKat.

And I love spa days.

Lunch, swimming and lying around with a book all sound to me like things much better enjoyed separately.

Well crack on then, other people are allowed to feel differently 🤷🏼‍♀️

Things in life I do not get:

• Hot tubs: come and stew in other people's warm faecal matter
• Sauna: like being suffocated, but hotter
• Steam room: like being suffocated, but hotter and kind of wet

Hate them, completely agree with Emily Attacks views on them

A spa day would be my idea of hell.

I've had a couple of facials with different beauticians and hated both of them.

Massage - just no

I don't swim

I've seen what lurks in the water in jacuzzis and hot tubs. I have no desire to catch anything.

I'd rather sit under the apple tree in my back garden with a good book and a glass or two of my favourite tipple :)

I've only ever enjoyed it once, the lady giving massages did a nice facial massage and arm/hand. But she still talked too much for my liking. I'd prefer if she just nodded in acknowledgment that I arrived and then said nothing more I talk enough at home.

But really I'd prefer a long lunch morning to night in the sunshine with loads of food and wine.

I've only done a spa day once and I've never been so bored (I studied beauty therapy for 2 years) it was part of our course....!!! I'd rather go to a pub. 🤣🤣

@Halloumimuffin YES, YES, YES.

The sauna especially. Normal people, who - when it's above 28C - complain about lack of aircon, choosing to sit at a temperature above the one our body tries to regulate itself at. Just makes me feel sick.