It was... Okay, location isn't ideal, room I went into was way too dark, massage was more like being rubbed up and down for the hot stones and the Indian head massage was like someone touching my hair not a head massage, not impressed and not worth £70+ for the treatments.
All three of my stars are for the massage itself. Other than that it was quite a strange (and not very relaxing) experience. The treatment rooms are on the third floor of a building which houses various offices. You need a code to let yourself through the 1st floor door and then I was wandering up the stairs and around corridors for 5-10 minutes before I spotted a sign on a wall (which I had missed when I walked past it earlier, as it wasn't directly at the top of the stairs).
When I went through the front door of California Beauty there was no obvious reception or staff to greet me. A therapist came out of a treatment room and quietly apologised, as if she had walked in on me! A couple of minutes later someone told me to take a seat and handed me a consultation form. The hallway area was very dimly lit, presumably to create an atmosphere, but it made it very hard to see the consultation form to fill it in. The lady who handed me the form came back to collect it and told me they were running late, but she showed me into a treatment room, moved the massage table to the middle of the room and set it up for me to get on. She told me she didn't know how long they would be but I should get undressed and wait under the towel on the table. The room was lit with two strings of flower fairy lights, one at either end, so again, it was hard to see what I was doing. There was music quietly playing in the room, but it was drowned out by what I assumed was a spray tan being applied next door. It sounded like a vacuum cleaner constantly running through the thin wall to my left.
I waited for about 10 minutes before the lady came back and asked me to lie face-down. Somebody else then came in the room and the two of them were prepping for my massage. The first lady asked about my areas of tension and the second lady started applying oil to my back. I was confused as it appeared that I was going to have two therapists provide my treatment, which wasn't what I had booked. After a while the first lady left, so it turned out the second lady was my massage therapist, which was odd as I wasn't introduced to either of them and I didn't even see the therapist until after the treatment!
The treatment itself was quite good. I chose a bamboo treatment as I had a large amount of tension in my shoulders and I hoped the bamboo sticks would provide enough pressure over my muscles to release them. She spent a good amount of time on my one main area of tension, but it turned out her hands provided a lot more pressure than the sticks did.
At the end of the massage she asked me to turn over and another lady came into the room to ask if she needed assistance. She stayed in the room for a couple of minutes, with the door open, speaking to the therapist as if I wasn't there, having a treatment. Once she left my therapist put some paper towel and another towel over my eyes, told me to get up in my own time and left the room. I didn't understand why she had covered my eyes right before I had to get up, when the relaxing atmosphere had already been broken and the treatment had finished.
I got dressed in the dark, as there were no other lights in the room apart from the dim fairy lights, and my therapist brought me in a glass of water. I was bending over to put my shoes on at the time and she made a joke about 'wasn't it lucky she hadn't come in while I was still undressed', which seemed a little weird. When I left the room there was no-one around, so I let myself out of the premises without any post-treatment discussion or 'goodbye'. There were no signs directing me back out of the building, apart from fire exit signs, so it was just as stressful finding my way out as it was to get in!
Overall it was a beneficial treatment, as my back felt a lot less tense afterwards, but the atmosphere was strange and the staff were not very professional. If I need another massage when I'm back in Glasgow I'll try somewhere else next time.