Schools Out -- Massage in Portoroz, Slovenia

School is out!

tears were shed as I began to say goodbye to good friends, colleagues, and students. What a year... what a whirlwind of joy teaching as a first grade and music teacher!

After school was out, we had two work days cleaning up shop (That was a monday and a tuesday). On the wednesday after that I went to the beach Grignano where I successfully lost my italian cell phone (go me, after a whole year with it, I lose it at the very end! ughh eek!). And then THURSDAY headed out with Amanda to Portoroz, Slovenia for my first professional massage EVER!  oh my goodness was that quite an experience!

So Amanda and I get dropped off on a beautiful stretch of beach in Portoroz on the one side, and a five-star hotel/resort/spa thingy-mabob on the other facing us. We had an hour to spare so we went to a restaurant along the water beach side where the waiter asked us what we wanted (which wasn't on the menu), said he could do that, and then said we wanted two large beers and sat us down. We sat down before we realized that he basically told us what we wanted and then when I went to change the order, he had beat me with the beers and huge sandwiches! that was fun... and then we went back to the hotel for the massage!

 It was the "Shakti Ayurveda Centre" of the Lifeclass Hotels & Spa . Anyway we walk up, they point us to the right direction of  the spa center. We take an elevator, come out, turn---and BANG, I'm in India all of a sudden (or at least it felt like that). There were these two huge ornately decorated green/white doors with all the sorts of indian engravings and symbols that you can think of; and the door had a huge heavy  handle and it was quite an exertion of strength to open. When we walked in, the inner chamber was dark.  There was mood music going on and incense burning. I was thinking, What the heck did I just walk into?  it looked like this:

Anyhoo we come in and they immediately usher us to back rooms that have low lighting and look really comfortable and there is  this earthy, water-fally type music playing.  The guy massaging me hands me my change of clothes, which wasn't much, and instructed to me to lie down. Then it was time for a massage. It was 80 minute-full body- relaxation... we're talking the music, the lots of oil that smelled nice, and some powdery herby bags that they used at the end to get the oil off of you...we're also talking the sometimes awkward-ness on my part--but hey--it was my first professional massage! ...I also must say that I  tried really hard not to fall asleep, but I did at one point... ok maybe two...(shoot!)-- 

Then at the end of our massage they gave us the BEST tea ever... I should have asked for the name. But it was a perfect amount of sweetness and florally-ness :)

After the massage we were deliriously happy and relaxed... we barely noticed when an hour went by and our ride hadn't picked us up--well we noticed... but we were so calm that we really didn't care much... after an hour and a half of waiting we decided that we should probably be concerned and attempted figuring out our situation.

Long story short, our original ride didn't come (we found out later they were in an accident--but they are okay!),  and after attempting to walk the 100 Kms home to Trieste, we fortunately, got picked up and rescued by Amanda's husband Michael and our italian friend Dario! Ok we actually barely walked more than maybe 2 km---fine, 1 km... before we turned around and waited for our rescuers while enjoying the evening with nutella crepes :)

What a day :)  the night ended with a pizza in Opicina and sleep

the next day i rested...and Saturday I headed to Lugano, Switzerland to see Lizzy and Alex and the rest of his fam-

and I'm thinking now: Oh adventures before returning home :)... I have more to write about!.... Lugano's next...