We picked a gorgeous sunny day (Hello to summer down here in Australia!) and headed to the local pool where we spent a lazy morning getting some sun, splashing in the water, reading, chatting and eating. We took our underwater camera and snapped some fun shots in the pool…. What could possibly be bad about that?

I don’t have much else to say about it, apart from mentioning that if we can have a great time on the ‘Worst Dates Ever’, there’s nothing stopping anyone else from having an absolute ball on the best of the best dates available on our website!

Mind you… we still have ‘Borrow a Kid’ and ‘Nudist Beach’ to go…. I could be eating my words very soon!

Disclaimer: Swimming at the Y fell into the bottom 5 after we had to remove going for a jog as Den has sustained a pretty serious leg injury that is preventing him from jogging. THAT said, Den and I used to meet for weekly jogs back in the day before we even got together. We would get up early and jog 5km around our local lake together. Tough work (especially if you’re a bit of a nuffy when it comes to jogging like I am), but there is still fun to be had. We made it a competition – Who could get the hottest body by Summertime. Gives you something to work towards. Plus, an excuse to strip down at the end and “assess” each other’s physiques!

We started with the most benign of the four worst dates: getting joint manicures. Not a bad one, especially from a female perspective. I don’t mind a good manicure. Feedback from girlfriends was along the same lines: what a great date idea! Which makes me suspect it’s the men that have been voting it down… and Den wasn’t too impressed with the idea.

Nonetheless, we forged on. Being that we are all about the $30 Date Night, we had to find a manicure place that would do them for $15 a pop. In Australia, this is a little hard to come by. I understand that in the states, manis and pedis come a lot cheaper.

We ended up at the local beauty college. Our first mistake. You know what would have made it better? If we’d spent more than $30 and went to a proper day spa.

For a start, the manicures were hardly “joint”. We arrived at the beauty college, and were told to sit on a dilapidated couch to wait.

I was taken first to one side of the room for my manicure while Den was left sitting bereft on his own. No conversation to be had across the room.

Den’s therapist was running late due to a waxing crisis with her previous client (I shudder to even think!) so I was nearly done by the time he got started.

My therapist (Nail technician? Person?) was okay until we got to the color bit. I was going to go for my signature pale pink (plus, people, pale colors look better if you’re unsure of the quality of the craftsmanship!) but Den urged me to go for something a little more drastic. “Orange!” he insisted. So I relented and went for a reddy-orange shade.

Bad idea, Den. It was gooped on thickly, bleeding into my cuticles and onto my hand. She went back over every finger with an orange stick and some nail polish remover to take the bleed from my skin. I have known this to happen once or twice before in my manicure history – but not on every finger!

Meanwhile, this entire time Den was on the other side of the room looking seriously underwhelmed at his beauty treatment. And by the end of it, his cuticles looked just as bad as when he went in.

But you know what? It could have been a really good date, I think. Just not a good $30 Date one. If we’d spent $50 on the date, we could’ve gone to a great little boutique salon like French Pink, where we would have been sat next to each other, could’ve laughed with the therapists and our nails would have looked much better.

Nonetheless, I do quite fancy my bright nails. They made me feel very va-va-voom all weekend!

And ladies, if you do decide to organize this date for yourself and your beau? I hear from my reliable sources over at Twitter that men appreciate a pedi much more than they do a mani. Just a little hint there.

Next week? Swimming at the Local Pool, me thinks. Which I’m kinda excited about! What gives with it being on the crap date list?

If you have any of your own date ideas (crap or otherwise) that you’d like to share, we’d love to hear about them.