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AMRITA SPA
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA
Perched high atop the five-star Raffles L’Ermitage, the Amrita Spa delivers an experience as exclusive and intimate as the premises it calls home. Available only to guests of the L’Ermitage, the spa, with its sweeping views of the Hollywood Hills and multi-million dollar homes, feels more akin to a members-only club than a standard issue hotel spa. Tiny, but nonetheless elegantly pristine, the Amrita serves up the basics like Swedish Massage and Shiatsu (55 min. $175 each) exceptionally well. In addition to an extensive list of facials and body treatments that includes a Gentleman’s Facial ($225) and a detoxifying Green Tea and Ginger Body Wrap ($225), the Amrita Spa also offers a signature Jet Lag Massage (55 min. $175) that is ideal for travel weary souls. Combining equal parts aromatherapy, massage, and foot and hand reflexology, this treatment is meant to improve circulation, aid digestion, and generally relieve the fatigue of flying. In short, it is the traveling businessman’s dream come true. After treatments, guests of the Amrita Spa are invited to sweat out their anxieties in the steam room or work off a little stress on state-of-the art exercise equipment that overlooks the expanse of the City of Angels. There is also a scene-free private rooftop pool where you’ll enjoy a quick dip or simply lounge in the sun while taking in the 360-degree view of the city while enjoying a nosh. http://www.raffles-lermitagehotel.com
—Duane Wells

SOLAGE CALISTOGA
CALISTOGA, CALIOFORNIA
Calistoga, California has always been known for its mud treatments. Get an updated twist on the tradition at Solage Calistoga, the town’s gorgeous new spa resort. Set among green hills, Solage offers contemporary, high-design luxury that’s new to low-key, rambling, lovable Calistoga. You’ll enter the spa past a round dish filled with flames, putting you immediately in touch with the elements. Continue your elemental explorations with a lava/sea salt scrub or a Fuzzy Navel body peel. Mud wraps, Aphrodisiac Soaks for two, or hot/cold stone massages relax you. By all means, though, try their signature treatment, the Mudslide. At most Calistoga spas, you sink into a tub full of mud. Here’s Solage’s take on the process: it starts with a visit to the Mud Bar, where your friendly Mud Tender helps you choose your “cocktail.” A mix of mud powder from California and South America is blended with green tea, wasabi root, grapeseed extract, and other softeners. After adding some of Calistoga’s own geo-thermal water, they’ll infuse it with aromatic oils you choose for your desired effect: revitalizing (spearmint, honey, sandalwood, and lime); stress relief (lavender, bergamot, tangerine, geranium, and rosewood); mood enhancer (orange, mimosa, ylang ylang, and rose); or muscle soother (birch, eucalyptus, geranium, rosemary, and ginger). You’ll be shown into a private room where you’ll coat each other with the refreshing goop (this isn’t politics, so go ahead and sling some mud). Lie together on a palette, cucumber compresses on your eyes and a cool drink by your side, as the soothing substance bakes in. After washing it off in the indoor or outdoor shower, you’re ready for step two: soaking in a tub filled with warm mineral water for rehydration. Finally, you’ll move to a “Go Sound” chair, reclined to practically upside-down as you lie for twenty minutes, swathed in blankets, soft music playing through your headphones. As you head for the clothing-optional steam room or hot tub (or back to your comfy studio cottage), pause to feel each other’s skin. Did a twenty-year old lend you his soft suppleness? Spa treatments from $65 for 30-minute exfoliations or body peels, to $95 for Mudslide and up to $300 for various combination treatments. http://www.solagecalistoga.com
—Rich Rubin

SPA GAUCIN
DANA POINT, CALIFORNIA
They often say the devil is in the details. After a luxurious weekend at the five-star St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort, I must disagree; the details feel an awful lot like heaven. Just a few miles south of Laguna Beach, cradled in a descending valley over the sparkling Pacific, the hotel is a Tuscan palazzo on a towering California scale, but it is the small, carefully chosen elements that make this getaway a true wonder. The spacious, inviting guest rooms feature luscious beds with Pratesi Italian linens. The buttery-toned public spaces are filled with a serious art collection, including vibrant Chihuly glass in the lobby rotunda. A popular High Tea service in the Motif Restaurant (one of six on-site dining options) includes delicate pastries made by the hotel’s very own pastry chef. Even the private beach club offers a unique service: Surf Butlers, attractively approachable and bronzed, exuberantly sharing their love of the waves in one-on-one training sessions (one-hour lesson, $85). Step into the resort’s Mediterranean-inspired Spa Gaucin, and the attention to detail continues. Alongside the fully-equipped gym, a pool dedicated to lap swimming is not only kept at a perfect 83 degrees, but also has submerged speakers to help power each stroke with music. The steam room is infused with eucalyptus to open your pores and invigorate your senses. A newly revamped treatment menu highlights ultra-exclusive Kate Somerville products, the secret of Hollywood beauties like Jessica Alba. Try the specifically targeted Just for Men facial and see how this clinical skincare line delivers immediate, glowing results ($175). In the hands of a welcoming, expert staff, their signature Mediterranean Massage surprises with a chardonnay grapeseed oil and soothes with a warm compress on your feet and back ($175). Tucked into a lounge chair as comfortable as a chenille throw, an attendant offers a glass of champagne—one final attentive touch in a divine escape. http://www.stregis.com/monarchbeach
—Thomas Mize

SPA LUCE
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA
Hollywood has a new, and much needed, urban oasis conveniently located within the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel and Spa. Spa Luce is a Mediterranean inspired retreat, perfect for exhausted tourists and stressed-out industry types in need of some anger management. In keeping with Hollywood’s new upscale and exclusive vibe, Spa Luce is tastefully secluded behind stark white doors that usher you into a rooftop pool area where bathing beauties enjoy a spa lunch with the Hollywood hills acting as a backdrop. Through another set of white doors you’ll find yet another door, barely noticeable in the lobby’s corner. At last you’ve arrived, seemingly transported to a hidden sanctuary on an isle of Greece, Santorini perhaps. The spa’s reception area, with white walls and sunlit dome ceiling, instantly evaporates any remaining LA road rage, and within minutes you’re relaxing in a soft robe on overstuffed white cushions, sipping cucumber-infused water. The faint sound of water in an orchid-filled fountain and the subtle white on white palette almost trick your mind, making you feel like you’ve just found a secret Mediterranean villa. The Hammam Ritual here is a signature treatment that will further your fantasy and prolong the dream. Based on the skin care practices of the Hammam bath houses, you will be intensely cleansed with Moroccan mint tea and silt, vigorously scrubbed with coffee, olive stones, and fresh lemons, then a rich rhassoul clay is applied to draw deep impurities out of your body. After a private shower in the treatment room, the ritual is finished with a Turkish massage, using the curative essences of cardamom, jasmine, bergamot, amber, and clove. Your Mediterranean fantasy must eventually come to a relaxing end, but think how much nicer you’ll be on the drive back home. http://www.spaluce.com
—Joseph Schmitt

SPA AT TORREY PINES
LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA
The first thing you notice about Spa at Torrey Pines is the design. Inspired by Scottish genius Charles Rennie Macintosh, the look fits this Craftsman-style resort, from wall designs to swirling carpet patterns to a wooden desk with tiny cutouts. Silver vases hold white flowers. Chairs show that distinctive, high-backed Macintosh style. If the look is Craftsman, the treatments reflect the flora of La Jolla’s Torrey Pines State Reserve, the 2,000-acre cliffside park where the resort/spa is located. This is particularly true in their signature treatment, which is heavy on coastal sage, a plant that grows in abundance here above the Pacific Ocean. You’ll start with a soak in the hydrotherapy tub, scented by lemongrass and sage bath salts, before proceeding to a Coastal Sage body scrub that capitalizes on the purifying/detoxifying qualities of the herb. Finish off with a massage that makes use of the spa’s own sage-based products. Sage-phobes can select plenty of other treatments, from foaming seaweed or organic vegetable body wraps to a gentleman’s facial or couples massage. Linger in the sauna, scented with eucalyptus oil, or the aromatherapeutic “inhalation room.” Then, sip tea in front of the relaxation lounge’s fireplace. What better way to mellow out after your D-Aging Body Wrap or Fruity Peel? Spa treatments from $70 for various water therapies to $295 for Signature Treatment. http://www.lodgetorreypines.com
—Rich Rubin

WELL WITHIN SPA
SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA
Santa Cruz is into soaking, and there are a few businesses downtown where you can spend time in hot tubs and pools either communal or private, clothed or not. Well Within Spa has spacious private spa rooms you rent by the hour for yourself, as a couple, or with a group. Many of the Jacuzzi tubs (perpetually filtered and blessedly unchlorinated), are outdoors on a private deck, like mine, with private Japanese garden, bamboo fountain, and the world’s largest orchid plant. There is also a private sauna with a bucket of purified water and aromatherapy oil to ladle over the hot rocks, and a two-man shower. For the hour I jump from tub to sauna to shower to a bench beneath my private wisteria arbor to sip the provided pot of herbal tea. The chime of a bell tells me my time is up (50 min. $13) and I should dry off and head upstairs for my massage appointment. It’s hard to leave this sanctuary, but I don the organic cotton kimono and meet Lera Lee for what has to be the most nurturing massage ever. She is so easy-going and comfortable, languorously-paced and profoundly focused, by the end of 50 minutes ($70), with all the tension of travel erased, I just want to be held and rocked to sleep. All the therapists of Well Within’s team have long histories of licensed practice and specialize in different styles of massage. There is a full menu of facial and body care treatments, stylized wellness rituals, and an on-site boutique with Well Within’s own product line of muds and creams as well as other high-end skincare and grooming items. http://www.wellwithinspa.com
—Andrew Mersmann

VODA SPA
WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA
Just east of the nerve center of gay life in Los Angeles, in an assuming warehouse-like building on Santa Monica Boulevard, sits Voda Spa, a contemporary facility reminiscent of a very upscale, state-of-the art community center. Sleek and modern, yet simultaneously warm and inviting, Voda Spa is the result of a collaboration between three Russian immigrant families who pooled their resources to create a spa that blends treatments and saunas unique to Russian culture with others from around the globe. At Voda, traditional Finnish saunas co-exist alongside Turkish steam rooms and Russian banyas (saunas). Similarly, since the spa is co-ed, both sexes commingle around the centerpiece pool, fireplace, and common areas. In the banyas, the spa offers a series of unique treatments, the most extraordinary of which are the platza and salt scrub. The platza ($25) is conducted in a dry banya at about 250 degrees. I am massaged, using a series of rhythmic taps and strokes, with Venik branches. This motion generates heat over my body and releases the essential oils from the leaves. The platza is said to draw out impurities, improve circulation, prevent premature aging of the skin, improve metabolism, and refresh the spirit. Conversely, the salt scrub (20 min. $50) is conducted in a hot, wet banya at a temperature of around 230 degrees. The body is first scrubbed with soapy water and a linen brush, and then caked with salt crystals from the Dead Sea that are meant to exfoliate and help draw out impurities. After the invigorating treatment, guests are plunged into a 42-degree cold plunge pool. For the post-spa enjoyment of its clients, Voda invites guests to stick around and enjoy light California cuisine at the Voda Café and maybe a Champagne or vodka cocktail in the modern V Lounge, which is lined with flat screen televisions. http://www.vodaspa.com
—Duane Wells

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