Travel Picks: Top hotel spas for a pampered break
If being pampered is your idea of the perfect vacation, an increasing number of hotels are catering for you.
Online travel guide book publisher and hotel booking service LUXE City Guides Hotel & Villa Collection has compiled a list of the top best hotel spas (www.luxecityguides.com). Reuters has not endorsed this list.
1. Barcelona - Six Senses Spaat the Hotel Arts Barcelona
With endless views over the Mediterranean from the 42nd and 43rd floors, this spa offers chromotherapy -- or color therapy using six colors to promote balance and healing -- as well as steam rooms, sundecks, vitality pools, and ice fountains. (www.sixsensespas.com)
2. Hong Kong - The Oriental Spa at the Landmark Mandarin Oriental
The epitome of urban spa excellence, women and men get separate areas and services like dry sauna and Laconium respectively. The 'Path to Recovery' treatment, with top-to-toe pressure point massages, is ideal for metropolitan highfliers or try the Shanghainese medical pedicure. (www.mandarinoriental.com)
3. Los Angeles - Argyle Salon & Spa at Sunset Tower Hotel
At this two-floor, 6,600 sq ft spa with patio space, book in for the 'Argyle Ultimate Experience' for all over pampering, or there's a hammam, beauty salon and medi spa, with treatments offered in outside cabanas. (www.argylela.com)
4. Miami - The Standard Spa at The Standard Miami Beach
This holistic and hydrotherapy spa is centered around bathing, with an outdoor infinity pool with underwater music, a Roman waterfall hot tub, and an Arctic plunge pool. (www.standardhotels.com)
5. New York - Shibui at The Greenwich Hotel
You need to be a guest at Robert de Niro's hotel to use this subterranean Japanese bathhouse lookalike, with Oriental-inspired treatments and a lantern-lit pool under a 250-year-old Japanese farmhouse roof. (www.greenwichhotelny.com)
6. Paris - Spa de la Reine at Le Pavillon de la Reine
Let the skilled hands at this Carita spa in a 17th century townhouse work their magic with a facial or body treatment, then chill out in the jacuzzi and hammam, and finish off with make-up and hair. (www.pavillon-de-la-reine.com)
7. Rome - Wellness Zone at the Hotel de Russie
Massage therapy, Watsu and hydro-relaxation are all on offer at this state-of-the-art complex. Pamper those shopped-out feet with the Ancient Roman Ritual and come out floating. Martinis in the courtyard Stravinskij Bar are the perfect ending. (www.hotelderussie.it)
8. Tokyo - The Spa at the Mandarin Oriental
This Asian haven floating 36 floors above Tokyo is the perfect urban getaway, with city or Mount Fuji vistas. Crystal steam rooms, vitality pools and East-West therapies, including the 'Azuki Ritual', a body-cleansing treat using the namesake Japanese bean, are on offer. (www.mandarinoriental.com)
(Editing by Miral Fahmy)