When I was livin' the life in gorgeous California, I never realized how much of a "tan" I actually had until I moved to Belgium. Given, I wasn't as tan as others, but I didn't look nearly as transparent as I am now.
Since I've been here, I've ended up with a Ghost Tan: a type of tan one gets during the duration of the winter season ...the person usually ends up looking white and pasty. also acquired when too much time is spent indoors. Now, I get out and about..it just so happens that this country's weather is rather temperamental and tends to stay overcast with a dash of rain. Sunny days are kinda like a gamble..maybe you'll see sun, maybe you won't.
Anyway, since I've been racking up the mileage by walking outside and what not..I've gained some not so fantastical t-shirt lines that I'm not very fond of. As vain as it sounds...I don't want to look ridiculously stupid when I'm wearing a dress in Italy with an obvious farmers tan. I feel stupid when I'm wearing a tank top around the house and I have pasty white upper arms but tan forearms. Oh, and my neckline..ha...you can tell it's either a scoop neck, or a v shape. This is giving me flashbacks to high school and college when the various swimsuits I wore for water polo (practice and actual game play) left me with multiple tan lines. Eeeek! So, I started to poke around here and see if I could find a reasonably priced tanning salon since I not only want to even out my tan, but get some sort of baseline tan going before I go to Italy. I'm expecting it to be sunny and rather warm there, so I'll be wearing skirts, tank tops and sun dresses while being a typical tourist.
There happens to be a place in my town called " Zonnestudio Sole Tuo" ..which means Tanning Salon Sole Tuo. A gal that used to live here told me about it..basically where to find it, so I popped in to check it out. I was SO completely confused because there wasn't any attendants like you'd see in a salon in California. There wasn't a soul in the place! I checked out some of the signs that were posted..could make out a few things, but other than that, I didn't get much info and retreated back to my house to pick some peoples brains. After posting on FaceBook about the place, one gal was able to tell me that there's an attendant there who will help set you up (apparently she was on her lunch when I popped in). After being educated on how the place worked..I waited till after lunch time and popped back over there.
This place is VERY cool! In all honesty, if they had stuff like this set up in California, they'd do VERY well in terms of profit without paying an arm and a leg for staff. This place is open from 8am to 10pm, seven days a week including holidays (minor and major). When you first get set up, the gal does a skin assessment test on you to see what your skin type is. Once that's figured out, she programs your personal client card with that information (I'm a skin type 2, so I'm considered very fair) so when you use a tanning bed, whatever bed you use will adjust to your skin type as far as allotted time usage.
There's five different tanning beds you're able to use. Number five is for newbies like myself to use till we get a decent base tan built up.
Once the base is built, then you can start either bed three or four, which has stronger lamps to get a deeper tan.
They also have a stand up bed, which is bed two if you want to get rid of white underarms or just prefer to stand.
If you're die hard and love looking like a milk dud, then you can use bed one which quite possibly has the most bells and whistles I've ever seen on a tanning bed. It has lamps for the front & back of your body like normal beds, but also has lamps where your head is (aimed towards your shoulders) so your shoulders get an even tan. AND, it also has the option to spray you with perfume (it offers various scents, lol) in addition to high powered fans, MP3 player and how intense you want the lamps to get.
Once you've figured out whichever bed you want to use, you go over to the tan ATM (that's the easiest way to describe it)..put your card into the machine and a menu will pop up.
Now, if someone happens to be in the bed you want to use, a timer will pop up on the screen to let you know how much time is left till it becomes available. That way, you're not waiting and waiting and playing the guessing game for when it's your turn. Green means available while red is "in use".
Since I'm a skin type 2, the screen will only show bed five for me for a while with different amounts of time I can pick from. The longer you hang out in a bed, the more you pay. For five minutes, it's €1.50..so with the exchange rate, that'd be $2.12...not too shabby.
You can either pay each time you come in to tan, or you can pre-load your card with €10, €15, €20 etc..however much you wanna put on it. That way, you won't have to bring your purse / wallet in with you and you use it like a gift card.
Once you pick your bed, the machine tells you that you have three minutes to go to your booth, prep the bed how you want it and get in till the bed itself turns on. It'll turn on and off automatically! When you're all done, there's a cleaning solution in each booth, so you spray down the bed, clean it of, toss your dry off towel in the "used" bin and and you go on your merry way. Oh, and your card keeps track of when you tanned, so when you're done..you can't tan for another 24 hours. I think that's excellent since there's some die hard tanners out there who'd love to lay out in one of those beds several times a day if they could!
I honestly think this is really cool! Now, I have absolutely NO intention on tanning so much I look like those peeps from Jersey Shore, and I certainly don't want to tan to the point where I look like an orange. I just want to get a "sun kissed" look so I can wear a dress without feeling like Casper. Since I'm investing so much time into losing weight and getting my body back to how I want it, I'm starting to care again about how I look on the outside in addition to my inner health.
