ravelled
DESTINATIONS SPAS | CRUISE
Wellness at sea reaches new, bacchanalian heights on board Silversea’s Silver Dawn. Jane Archer reports
i
travelweekly.co.uk
’m in the relaxation room on Silversea Cruises’ new Silver Dawn sipping lemongrass rum and munching chocolates after a tough 100 minutes of being oiled, massaged and generally pampered by therapist Sandra. I know, I know, it’s not the usual wellness gig you’d expect in a spa. I’m trying out Otium, a new way of spa-ing unveiled during the ship’s christening cruise in Portugal in April. It swaps celery juice and self-denial for the ancient Romans’ belief that living well and being well are one and the same. “Sweating and hard work don’t sit well with
Silversea, so we’ve taken a fresh look at the objective of the spa,” Barbara Muckermann, the line’s chief commercial officer, tells me. “We have stopped pretending. It’s not to improve health. It should deliver pleasure and indulgence.
Wellness should be enjoyable. Otium is a work in progress but we are going in the right direction.” She expects more passengers to use the spa now the whole experience is about enjoyment rather than abstinence. You still have to tick boxes that ask about stress, aches and pains on that mildly irritating form that all spa companies use (just how do you measure stress?) But it was delivered to my suite the day before my treatment, along with a plush Otium-branded bathrobe, so at least I could fill it in at leisure. I opted for The Otium massage, a treatment that involves being rubbed with an oil of my choice (the calming one, since you ask) and pummelled with bamboo, salt stones and a wooden pestle. Maybe it’s the oil’s aroma, but I soon drift off to another world. The spa has created several signature treatments for Otium, including The Apollonian Spirit massage, ²
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