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Florida Spas: Spa at Four Seasons Resort Palm Beach
April 12, 2010
Walking down the graceful marble steps of the Spa at the Four Season Resort Palm Beach, the words of an old Janis Joplin song float through the mind – “they paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.” Well here, they did just the opposite they ripped up a garage and put up a spa!
The spa
The Signature Kate Somerville Facial
The personal fitness consultant
A few special touches
The beachfront Four Seasons in Palm Beach is located about a 20-minute drive from downtown Palm Beach and the designer shops of Worth Ave., Southern Florida’s Rodeo Drive. The spa is designed by Canada’s Brian Gluckstein.
One enters into a lovely, large reception area where the prevailing colour - a calm, barely-there sea foam green - offers a welcoming sense of arrival. Gluckstein’s soft, understated elegance is carried throughout the spa which includes 10 treatment rooms, a couples’ suite (with settee and private shower and steam), the Willow Room (for small groups or for use by the on-staff barber to administer hot shaves and mini facials), a whirlpool lounge with domed ceiling, a hair salon and a mani/pedi area.
Marine and Asian inspired touches - coral design in the light fixtures, shell and bamboo motifs, for instance – complement the spa's Asian and marine-themed treatments. Along with all the expected treatments and services, the spa menu includes those that give a nod to local attractions: the Worth Avenue Shopping Splurge (a massage with special attention to legs and feet tired from a day of browsing the famous street's designer shops) and a Palm Beach Sun Recovery Wrap. The more exotic include an Asian Bamboo Massage and the ScenTao Journey a 80-minute head to toe treatment pairing hot stone and shiatsu. The main product lines are Babor, Phytomer and the exclusive Kate Somerville.
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The Signature Kate Somerville Facial is one of this spa’s featured treatments and that’s what I’m booked for. Kate Somerville, you may know, has built a reputation in Hollywood as the “A-list beauty guru.”
What makes her facial different is the combination of enzymatic exfoliation, oxygen and the use of LED light (a 20-minute session) to stimulate collagen, plump fine line and lighten pigmentation. My therapist Lorna does tell me, however, that you need four-to-six treatments to see any noticeable difference in the pigmentation of your skin. She uses the 20-minute light session to treat the feet with a pressure point massage. Overall it’s a lovely treatment and definitely on my list of best facials but at $325 U.S. for the 90-minutes, it’s costly. Is it worth the price? If four-to-six treatments do, indeed, lighten hyper-pigmentation then I say, give it a shot. As a one off, it’s a splurge.
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On the other side of the hotel, one floor down from the lobby level, there’s the gym also carved out of a space once occupied by cars.
It’s a small but well-equipped gym accessible to guests 24 hours a day. Susan Mask, the fitness coordinator/consultant available by request, is an independent personal trainer (for the last 12 years), a classically-trainer former ballerina and the mother of four. The effusive and passionate Mask says her mission statement is: Fitness/exercise is a tool to keep us moving thru space and time with ageless grace.
I like that.
She works from the concept of "core bionics" a term she says she created and describes as “training from the inside out.”
Breathe, Restore, Stretch, Strengthen
and Body Build are, she says, the five essential steps of fitness. “We have to get more purposeful with our exercise. There needs to be a mind muscle connection.”
If my one-on-one fitness session with Mask is any indication, the lady really knows her stuff. If you want to schedule a one-on-one, it’s wise to book in advance of your arrival.
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Little features and touches I really liked about the Four Seasons Resort Palm Beach:
• The few cabanas set-up with a view to the ocean rather than the pool. Love that I can, on this 21 day of my spa tour, comfortably take time out while, as the spa menu suggests, attuning my mood to the natural ocean rhythms.
• The pool-side restaurant menu with healthy choices such as Grilled Turkey Burger, Fish Tacos with Yucca Chips, Albacore Tuna Wrap
• Pool-side attendants who offer to “dress” the lounge chairs for each guest with clean towels and pass around iced water and chilled hand towels
• The bowl of fresh apples set out in the lobby.
• The giving-back Think Pink art exhibit, for the Breast Cancer Research foundation, in the lobby Living Room. (Note: The exhibit may be over by the time you read this.)
For more information on the Four Seasons Resort Palm Beach and the Spa Four Seasons Palm Beach
You might also enjoy reading about other spas in Florida and elsewhere visited on our Serendipitous Spa Tour 2010
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