Girl time

So I’ve experienced girl time New York-style in the month we’ve been here. In such a huge city where you don’t have any recommendations and things are done differently it’s quite daunting. But I’ve been overwhelmed by the choice to the point of almost not doing it, but have persevered.

• Finding the place – in a city like this everything is addressed by building, floor and room and when I went for my first appointment the place turned out to be a series of rooms in a hotel! Sounds very dodgy, a room for reception then rooms down the corridor for ‘treatments’ but it was all legit!
• Hair do’s – strange having someone else cut my after about 10 years of the same guy in Wellington so where do you start? I went for a salon that had products that I knew on a subway line easy for me to use from work or home. Next decision is whether to book with ‘stylist’, ‘senior stylist’ or ‘master’ – however when I phoned to make the appointment I wasn’t asked … and I didn’t have to wait months to get in despite not having been there before … so yep, I was with a ‘stylist’. Which I didn’t know until after the haircut when it cost me about a third of what I’d psyched myself up to possibly pay. And she didn’t do an awful hatchet job like her lowly status might make you wonder. In fact she was brilliant and I loved walking out of the salon and poncing off down to Bloomingdales, hair swishing (and no SDF, it’s no different really to the style I have now, just tidier and bouncier). She said all the right things about how lovely my hair was, gorgeous colour, well looked after etc and also provided me with a very important piece of information – not many places do eyelash tinting in New York as it’s illegal with out a licence. Which leads me onto my next girl time experience.
• Eyelash tinting – I now know why it was so hard to find a place that would do this, and that when I found a place it cost TWICE as much as my hair cut, in New Zealand it’s basically a $15-$20 add-on service!  When I was buzzed in to the multi-floored ‘spa’ I was faced with having my tinting done in a communal space in a chair normally used for manicures! Too weird, keeping your eyes closed against stinging tint with the elevator opening and closing and people coming and going and muttering.
• Manicures – haven’t had one of these but just about *everyone* does here. Mind you they’re pretty cheap so it’ not so much a luxury.
• Tipping – yep, even extends to girl time. You can put the cost of the treatment on the credit card but then have to tip in cash. I’ve had to have some how-to-calculate-20%-on-the-fly lessons because obviously The Mister wasn’t with me to deal with it!