Nothing more romantic than washing mud out of your husband's armpits

Last weekend was our romantic weekend in Calistoga, courtesy of Mom and Dad's gift certificate from about a year and a half ago. Of course, in my typical fashion I managed to lose the GC, get a new one and then find and mistakenly bring the old one which of course wouldn't work. Eh.

Anyhoo, we got on the road only about 5 hours late, and upon arrival at the walked to lovely downtown Calistoga from the Golden Haven spa, home of the internet mud bath special. The women there all seemed to be dressed like "women of the night," hmmm... Cool artwork at the restaurant, and snapped these photos in lieu of my planned food blogging.

The next morning after a quick breakfast we had our 3 hour couples special. Hot sticky mud to release the toxins, made even more relaxing by my husband's comment about soaking in all the other people's left-behind toxins. No hosing off by the staff, we were left in charge of getting the mud off ourselves, which is much easier with two and a jet spray. Then mineral bath (hot hot), blanket bath (more warmy goodness), massage and facial, whew. I really loved my skin after than, and in a spirit of pure illogical optimism I bought the cheap "mix it yourself" version of the facial kit.

More food, and reading, and naps, and food (with two key lime martinis), and etc. and our weekend was almost at an end. The place for breakfast was closed Sunday morning, so we headed down to the mexican spot down the street, which got so busy they were out of potatoes by 10am. We had a long mocha-filled liesurely breakfast what with them forgetting to put in our order. For gifts for the boys I found these gift bags at the local pharmacy marked with "boy," "young boy," "female," etc. We ended up with some cool dinosaurs and foam bath stickers. Check out hat spotted wandering down the street.

We could not possibly leave without some wine, and we found this beautiful place with very cool sculptures and tasty wines. The Queen of "I'm driving I can't really taste right now" free wine tastes walked away with two bottles for a future book club night, or moms drinking night, whichever comes first.

These thumbs were made by a sculpture from France and are the only ones in the United States.