Spa

The best spas in the city can be found at the high-end resorts, like the Four Seasons Splash Spa, a 50,000-square-foot space with ten treatment rooms. Both Ritz-Carltons have nice facilities: the one in South Beach is slightly smaller and offers treatments by therapists from Paris beauty house Carita; the one in Key Biscayne also has a top-of-the-line fitness center with classes that include Pilates and Tai Chi. The excellent spa at the Mandarin Oriental has seventeen treatment rooms, some with huge windows overlooking Biscayne Bay. There’s also a cool spa at Miami Beach’s Standard Hotel (featured above) owned by André Balazs, a peaceful, chic bathhouse that borrows from Roman and Turkish traditions. You can chill out in the sultry coed hammam or outside in the playful mud lounge. Acqualina's ESPA offers holistic treatments in sixteen treatment rooms. Unlike the gilded interiors around the hotel, the spa boasts a modern Zen-like design, with dimmed lighting, dark wood flooring and a sedate Asian ambiance that feels more Bali than Bal Harbor. Treatments range from simple manicures to half-day “journeys” dedicated to balancing charkas, purifying pores and eliminating jet lag (a common complaint amongst the hotel’s large contingent of European guests).