Tour of European hotel bathrooms

Fancy hotel bathrooms, dear readers, will be posted here for your amusement, for the next few weeks!

Here is a swanky hotel-in-training, The Park Plaza County Hotel near Waterloo train station in London. It’s huge and made of glass and has glowing purple columns and recessed lighting in the sidewalk, and a guy in a bowler hat hailing your taxis. From bed I am looking out a floor to ceiling window with a view of dawn over east London.

The bathroom looks lovely and the bathtub is deep!

The glassed-in shower beams you up to the Enterprise,

But OMG people! The bath stuff! It’s not fancy!

It’s like little slivers of Dove soap jammed into a plain box that says Park Plaza Hotel! I’ve got some serious generic shampoo over here and it’s just sad.

The bathrobe is like a bunch of rough old towels from the YMCA circa 1977, sewn together and rented out. Look, the rental label is still on my lapel:

I can’t make fun of this enough! This is an “executive suite upgrade”?

Maybe it was the Bathroom Mirror Defogger. Seriously? A defogger?

While a Mirror Defogger is nifty, it is not essential to a fancy bath. Good bath stuff is what you need, sad new fake-posh hotel!

Where are the rare platypus placenta and ostrich toejam creams lightly scented with repackaged toxic waste and an anti-oxidizing Brazilian Trendy Fruit of the Month ? What is this travesty of shampoo that smells and feels like the liquid that comes out of handwashing dispensers in a gas station restroom? Mother of god, hotel people, at least put some scrolly text on these bottles in a half-assed attempt to convince me I’m have a Spa Experience.

I would like a Ginger Acai Cosmopolitan Pomegranate Lemon Drop Mojito… IN MY SOAP.

Capitalism, ur doin it rong.

Fancy cheap: pot scraper strigils!

For many years my fevered imagination cast desperately about. I read. I pondered. I wondered, “What the hell is a strigil, really?”

Basically it’s a scrapy gadget that they used in ancient Greece, in baths. After a hot sweaty naked wrestling match, sexy muscley men talking about philosophy oiled each other up in a steamy sauna and then scraped each other clean with one of these mystery implements.

After exercising or engaging in competition Greek athletes would scrape the dust off their body with a strigil. The process was facilitated by covering the body with olive oil prior to exercising. The curved handle allowed the strigil to be hung on the wall of the gymnasium, together with the sponge and the aryballos containing the oil (see Le sport dans la Grèce antique: du jeu á la compétition, D. Venhove, ed., Ghent, 1992, pp. 229-230, nos. 91-92).

It sounds great. The exercise makes you sweat, the hot air of the, well, whatever they called a Greek sauna or calidarium or place of hot baths and steaminess, loosenes up all the gunk in your pores, and the strigil scrapes off the layer of oil that dissolves the horrible scurfy layer of dead skin.

You too can fantasize about sweaty naked ancient Greek philosopher wrestlers while you scrape your oily body clean!

For lo! There is the $1.50 plastic pot scrubber!

It works perfectly. I recommend you get a two pack and scrape pots with one, your skin with the other. If you are *two muscley guys who have just wrestled* then skip the pots, use both the strigils, and send me the photos.

DIY Bath: Sugar, salt, and oil

My favorite face scrub is one I make in the kitchen, with olive oil, sugar, salt, and lemon juice. Do-it-yourself bath stuff totally rocks. This stuff is cheap, it scrubs the grease and dead skin off my face very gently, and it leaves skin clean & soft.

I like it not too dry, a little on the oily side. The sugar and salt don’t dissolve all the way, so they’re effectively little bits of scrubby pumice. The lemon juice makes it smell nice. Let me know in comments if you’ve tried this with essential oils or other scents than citrus!

No one could call it really *fancy*, but it works and it feels lovely.

You will feel silly for every $20 jar of adzuki bean or pumice or apricot kernel scrapy-particle crap you have ever bought. Sugar is perfect!

My personal theory about the salt is that it has some good germ-killing qualities. Therefore it must be helpful for acne. I’m sure I made this up.

Mix up a batch and keep it in a jar. Surely, as an addict of fancy bath stuff, you have a lot of different jars and tubs and empty containers you can’t bear to throw away because they seem so useful? Guess what, this is what they’re useful for! It’s best not to mix too much at once, especially in hot weather, so that the oil stays fresh.

I get the lemons from my garden. Hey! That gives me an idea! Locally produced home grown lemons are FANCY. Therefore, my DIY bath scrub is fancy bath stuff! In fact I could write all over the jar with a Sharpie and declare that it is Northern California Organic Meyer Lemon Virgin Exfoliation Refreshing Moisturizing Sandpaper of Fanciness. Yay!

On the way less fancy side: I have found that while traveling, it can be very handy to nip a couple of salt or sugar packets from airport cafes. Then on long plane flights you can scrub your face in the airplane bathroom with it and a little warm water. It helps get rid of the horrible grubby feeling of airplanes.

Has anyone tried this with different kinds of oil? I use olive oil because that’s what I cook with. It might make a difference to use the nicest extra virgin cold press olive oil, and it might not, but I would not know because I am waaaay too snobby to have any lesser types of olive oil in my house. It’s extra virgin first cold press all the way. And in a big metal tin actually from Italy because then sunlight doesn’t get at the oil.

Sicilian Blood Orange creamy soap

I came back from another trip with nice hotel soap. The soap rocks, the shampoo sucks. It’s Tarocco “Sicilian Red Orange Extracts Face & Body Cleanser” with olive oil. They really do it right, as it’s creamy lathery textured soap, not too harsh, nicely moisturizing. The orange smell is perfect, very orangey with a hint of candy to it, without being cloying.

I’m a big fan of stuff with olive oil in it. Food or bath, either way.

Hat tip to the “fancy” end of things to the point of mockability, as the packaging describes it as “extracts of Sicilian Red (Blood) Oranges which are rich in Vitamin C and other powerful antioxidants”. Right, just sort of imply that it’s nutritious and will like prevent me from getting hair cancer or whatever it is antioxidants are supposed to do. Um whatever! Oh also, note how the locality of the Red (Blood) Oranges is all important for fanciness. It’s not enough to say Oranges or even Blood Oranges, or even Italian Oranges, we have to get all specific about how they’re Sicilian because the more specific the location the more exotically fancy and rare the product sounds. Hilarious!

The shampoo, though! It has the same nice smell, so I had high hopes. But the effect of it is way too harsh and nasty. I might as well have doused my hair in paint thinner. It dried like a head full of wonky purple straw.

Based on the soap, I am curious to try the orange and clove hand lotion:

This lotion has shea butter in it which tends to be a bit greasy, but nice. In other words nice for hands but not necessarily for faces. Orange + clove is a great combination. I always wonder why not just go all out and smell like an apple pie?

Skin Care - Crabtree & Evelyn

I just took the best shower ever. I’m all smooth and cool and refreshed and I smell yummy. Too bad no one is home to give me the sniff test. This morning I realized that I hadn’t showered in several days. Having a one year old will do that to you even if you are the most ardent bath enthusiast.

Crabtree and Evelyn used to kind of suck. Their scents were too flowery and artifical for my tastes. Lately, though, I have come around. Last year someone gave me the CRABTREE & EVELYN, LTD. Gardeners Hand Recovery 3.5 oz (100 g) kit for Christmas. My cuticles are flaky and dry at the best of times and one thing they don’t tell you about having a baby is that you will suddenly be washing your hands every five seconds. Also, I work with wildlife as a volunteer and well, washing your hands a million times is crucial. Anyway, this Hand Recovery duo works really well. Way better than lotioning your hands and wearing gloves to bed. It’s not too greasy and works great on toes too.

Oh and at the 2006 Blogher event they gave out free (big!) samples of the La Source line. I only JUST NOW used up the last of the lotion alst night. I think Lizzard may have given me her samples as they were too smelly for her, which may explain why I took so long using it all up. I’m not sure where they are going with the whole “la Source” thing… but the lotions was only okay.

I had a gift certificate recently for Crabtree & Evelyn (where did I get it?! I can’t remember) and so I went out to the Embarcadero Center store and browsed. Really folks, DO NOT go into this store if you don’t like overpowering horrible knock you down dead scent. OMG! I even asked the sales lady, “How do you stand smelling this crap every day?!” It’s so horrible. After about 5 minutes in there I was ready to grab ANYTHING to get the hell out to the store. Through my teary-eyed haze I finally found a product line that wasn’t guaranteed to make me smell like a bunch of plastic flowers. The Botanical Body Polisher in Clementine and Basil. WOO! Sounds good! and the Alpine Exfoliating Cleanser with Edelweiss and Hyssop. Perfect. Now get me the hell out of this store!

Both are great! Smelly in a non artificial or overpowering way. With one you get to pretend you are Julie Andrews and horrify everyone with in hear distance while you sing “I am sixteen going on seventeen” in the shower and with the other you get the satisfaction of knowing that you might just get out of the shower smelling like your garden, in a good way.

So my basic review for Crabtree & Evelyn is:
Do not go into the actual store. Really. It’s too horrifying.
The Naturals product line is really good. Smells nice and works well.

I’m keen to try a few other things from them. The Mineral Body Mist with Black Tea, Vetiver & Sugarcane for one. Doesn’t that sound awesome!!! And during summer I loves me a body mist! The In-Shower Moisturiserizer with Milk, Soy & Sugar 6.8 fl oz (200 ml) also sounds yummy. Has anyone tried either of these?

Burt’s Bee’s is the Bomb

I love Burt’s Bee’s bath stuff for grown ups. The lemon cuticle cream.. what can I say about it, except OMGPONIES?!?!?!!!!!

Check it: Burt’s Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Creme, 0.6-Ounce Tin (Pack of 3) It is pretty firm, not to gunky, and smells super duper lemony. You can even use this in the office without your sensitive coworkers freaking out about how smelly you are.

But this stuff for baby’s is so outrageously excellent. If your baby normally smells a little bit… er.. off… maybe a bit too much like lunch or redolent of that poop blow out from yesterday it is SO TIME to give him/her a bath with the Burt’s Bee’s stuff.

I know that after I bathe my baby in this stuff I give him a good night squeeze and then I have to go out side and run around screaming from all the tension of not being able to take a big bite out of his delicious apricot-y smelling leg. Is that wrong? If it is, I don’t want to be right.

The Apricot oil and buttermilk lotion is not only excellent for getting rid of cradle cap but can be used on grownups feet to make them nice and soft. You know how your heel gets all tough and weird, well the apricot oil will take care of it!

Someone gave me a smaller sample packet of this stuff and it lasted for like 3 months, so this large basket of goodies will last a really long time.
This makes a great baby shower gift that is useful and parents will thank you for.

Oh, and did I mention that Burt’s Bees has the best diaper cream ever? It’s like the most miracle ass cream on the planet. Go for the 3 pack: Burt’s Bees Baby Bee Diaper Ointment with Vitamin A and Vitamin E, 2-Ounce Tubes (Pack of 3)

A really, really good salt body scrub!

My nephew gave me this lemon mint body scrub for Christmas this year. It is really, really good. It’s lemony. It’s minty. It’s salty. It’s scrub-y.

This stuff is the bomb: Cool Mint Lemonade Salt Scrub with Crushed Mint Leaves 9 oz by Giovanni Organic Hair Care / 9 Oz.

You can buy some on Amazon and most beauty supply stores and even, I think, drug stores. Ten bucks gets you a nice big jar that lasts for along time.

There are some tips and tricks and a warning I need to give y’all though.

tip: Use this before your shower NOT in bath.
trick: Turn on shower, get in and get yourself damp, turn off water, scrub the living bejeezus out of your skin with the Cool Mint Lemonade Salt Scrub - If you are too wet the salt dissolves too quickly even tho they are good big chunks of knubbly salt.
warning: Do not touch your eyes, nose, mouth or vag after touching this stuff. Um! Tingly!

There is some hilarious marketing copy on the jar, behold:

If my body were to wish for something cool it would wish for a refreshing tonic with calming mint awash under a spring rain. If my body wished for that, I would drink in the refreshing fragrance of summer and feel alive.

Oooookay… Well, my body wishes for something more along the lines of OMGLEMONADEWITHFUCKINGMINTOMGTINGLYMINTGAH!

It leaves you feeling cool and minty and soft NOT greasy!

De-Funky Degunkify

I used this shampoo at someone else’s house and now I’m addicted to it. It’s like industrial degreaser for your scalp, especially good for behind the ears. It smells nice — supposedly that is the “icy pineapple and cotton leaf” smell. WTF is an icy pineapple? I don’t know, but it looks like lime Jello. The bottle also claims it has Tingling Deep Cleaning action and contains “Tingling Potion”. It’s like it’s going to reach its little lime jello tentacles down into the cartoon-drawing roots of each hair shaft and scoop out fingernails-full of scurfy disgustingness, all with the magic of BRIGHT GREEN SMELLY TOXIC WASTE.

Gosh, it’s great. I love chemistry and magic potions!

When I use it, it is only mildly tingly, but it definitely degreases. As I wash my hair I get the song “You’ve Got to Funkifize” in my head. It’s a peppy, complicated funk classic by Tower of Power, and you can buy it on Amazon mp3: Tower of Power’s Bump City. A very perfect hair washing song. So, now the smell of “Icy Pineapple” and Funkifize-ing are inextricably linked for me.

What, you don’t believe me that it’s a good song? For 99 cents you can buy it off Amazon MP3 and give it a spin.

Let’s look at the ingredients! It has the usual Sodium Laureth Sulfate sort of things. And Citric Acid (guaranteeing that it smells like a Sweet Tart as so many soapy things do.) Annas Sativus, which sounds mysterious but is just the Latin name for pineapple. Gossypium Herbaceum, a freaking fantastic name. That is the cotton leaf. (See what I mean about the industrial waste - somewhere, a heap of otherwise useless cotton leaves is being recycled into shampoo vats.)

So one more thing about this shampoo. Clairol Herbal Essences used to be one of those shampoos I would buy when I was poor and yet wanted something vaguely “natural” seeming. It had a faux-fancy feel to it. It was like the giant tub of your grandma’s cheap, good-for-you-herbal, boring shampoo that would stick around in the shower forever, not getting used up, as I moved on to more exciting things. So, some packaging genius got a hold of this product and jazzed it up. Now it is all teenagery with 8 million playful fonts, an asymmetric curvy bottle that looks like candy and a sexy glow stick and a vase you might buy from Ikea for two dollars on impulse. I think they have hit on something here.

What I do most often is use the degunkify on the parts of my scalp and neck that are super greasy. (If only it also exfoliated…!) Then I do the actual hair washing with another shampoo depending on what I want to smell like.

In a pinch, Herbal Essences Drama Clean Degunkify Tingling deep Cleaning Shampooalso works well as an all over body wash. It’s cheap, and available in pretty much any drugstore or grocery store.

Oh, honey! My fantasy bath with Lindsey Lohan!

Who wouldn’t want to have a fancy bubble bath with Lindsey Lohan, I ask you?! She’s so luscious and and has those cute little freckles across her nose! Where else does she have freckles?! OMG! You’re so bad! I’m NOT TELLING! You’ll have to envision your own fantasy bath with a nude Lindsey Lohan, you perv.

Lindsey Lohan naked! In one of those really deep Japanese soaking tubs! I would walk in in my little secretary outfit (high heels, hair in bun, glasses) in order to inform her of all her celebrity appearances for the day.

Oh Ms. Lohan! would you like to try this lovely Deep Steep Honey Bubble Bath? Here let me fill the tub for you, you’ll want to smell extra nice for your interview with Oprah!

As the tub filled with yummy honey smelling bubbles I would lean over to brush the hair from her bleary hung over eyes and *whoops* I would FALL IN THE TUB WITH HER!

As the water made my white button down silk shirt more and more transparent we would suddenly grasp each other in a passionate embrace, heaving bosom pressed to heaving bosom!

Laurkeet! she would gasp, I was hoping you would fall in!

Oh! Ms. Lohan! *blushing and giggling*

FADE TO BLACK….

My Celebrity Fantasy Bath with Robert Downey, Jr.

It’s time for a fantasy celebrity bath! Yes, here is Robert Downey, Jr. in my imagination, just before he gets naked.

Yes! Robert Downey naked! In my bathtub! On my blog! But only in my fantasy.

He would whip off his sunglasses. He would look rakish. I would shyly clutch the gleaming bubble bath to my heaving breasts. He’d get into the tub gracefully without stepping on me, because he’s fucking IRON MAN. I’d be all like “Oh, Bob, let me soap up your manly chest hairs with this tingly Dr. Bronners”.

Then he’d be all like “My darling Whore of Bath! SHAVE ME!”

“No! Bob! I can’t shave you! You’re SO HAIRY!”

“Oh Whore of Bath! Use your Magic Bath-Fu!”

“Okay Bob how about I whip out this Prince Triple Orange Blossom Shaving Cream by LUSH and carefully, delicately, shave every hair off your muscley, comic-book-heroish-yet-engineeringly-geeky body!”

*fade to flickering candlelight*

Then he would dry us off and we would both don our fantastic Iron Man and Iron Woman suits and fly off and go and blow shit up in huge explosions IN SPACE.