Spa Heaven or Hell

A friend of mine is moving away next weekend. And while I am sad to see her go, I am moving into her bedroom, I took her calling, and she is moving to San Francisco. Maybe she can move into my old bedroom and take my old calling? Would that make things even?

As a going away, we had a spa day with some of her nearest and dearest in Heaven. Heaven is in Queens, believe it or not; and is a place also known as Spa Castle. Holy cow - if being in water and laying in saunas is your thing, this is the place to go.

First off, the girls all wear matching outfits and so do the boys. Then in each locker room, there are bathing areas where swim suits are not allowed. Scary. For most of the day, we laid in saunas, hot tubs, special pools where the water flowed over you, etc. Each sauna had different minerals - like jade, gold, salt, etc. and was pretty cool (and hot). I run fairly hot naturally so I didn't last as long in the saunas as some of the girls did. I really enjoyed my 45 minute nap though in a lounge chair this afternoon. Those were special times.

By 6:30pm, there were only 3 of us left at the spa. We went down to the locker room and checked out the spa there and decided that we were going to brave it and go full throttle. Let me also say that the towels that they gave you in the locker room were about 6 inches wide and 12 inches long. If you were going to do it, you were going to do it. I must admit that after about 30 minutes of being in the room with about 50 other women who were baring it all, it became fairly empowering and suddenly I realized that no one cared the least about what I look like without my clothes on...except me. And then I ate a huge burrito and a snow cone for dinner. I'm just going to eat away that pain!

So - would you do it? I'm curious. Are you too self conscious or would you strip down in front of your friends in a bathhouse?