Where to Next: Spa Sojourn

Where to Next is The Local Foreigner’s guide to traveling in 2021, highlighting hotels destinations, and activities that are open and accessible to American travelers during the transitional period between the pandemic and the eventual return to round-the-world travel.

If #SelfCare was a buzzword in 2020, then it’s practically a dictionary entry in 2021. As the line between our work and home lives continues to blur, we find ourselves purposefully seeking ways to detach. Think about it…do you know anyone who would say no to a spa weekend right now? Here are four you can say yes to today.

SPA SOJOURN

"HEALING IS A MATTER OF TIME, BUT IT IS Sometimes

also a matter of opportunity”

Hippocrates

The Mayflower Inn & Spa

Washington, Connecticut

What happens when a Union Square holistic center with a cult following opens its second flagship in Litchfield County? A waitlist with a longer line than a Houston Street sample sale — that’s what. If you can manage to snag a coveted reservation at The Well, the east coast’s hottest wellness destination, consider yourself karmically blessed. Plus, when you’re not spa-ing, there’s plenty of buzzworthy goings-on to keep you occupied at The Mayflower. The resort’s “Friends of the Mayflower” series features months-long residencies by renowned chefs, artists, and creatives. Chef April Bloomfield is now holding court at the Mayflower’s Garden Room, where her four-course “garden supper” is raking in (pun absolutely intended) lots of local attention.

Highlights

Off property, Litchfield County is known for its antique shopping, but it’s also home to dozens of seriously underrated hiking trails.

Who Should GO

Hotel and design lovers, foodies, spa snobs

Best Time to Visit

Year-round

Miraval Arizona Resort & Spa

Southern Utah

Now synonymous with holistic travel, Miraval wrote the book on the all-inclusive wellness vacation. The brand's Arizona flagship is the apex of form and function sprawled across 400 acres of the arrestingly beautiful Sonoran desert, where guests come to recharge the mind, body, and spirit. Whether you're drawn to pre-dawn desert hikes, primitive spirit drumming, ayuervedic lectures, or simply the opportunity to lock your phone in a drawer for the weekend (the resort is digital-device free), Miraval has a way for everyone to disconnect from the eveyday.

Highlights

All-inclusive packages make stays easy and effortless. If Arizona's not your style, Miraval has sister properties in Austin, Texas and Lenox, Massachusetts

Who Should GO

Bachelorette parties (quiet ones, anyway), couples, solo spa-ers

Best Time to Visit

October-April

Chable Resort & Spa

Yucatan, Mexico

A 19th-century hacienda sits at the center of this blissful resort retreat on the Yucatan Peninsula, complete with antique tiles and crumbling stone arches. Continue further into the property, a former agave plantation, and you'll find forty casitas with hammocks and private plunge pools, guarded by giant palms and bedecked with a drapery of vines and woven lanterns (not to mention that Chablé has the world's largest private tequila collection). But the real draw here is the spa, which measures 32,000 square feet and is built around a cenote. Unwind to the melody of jungle birds in the place Conde Nast Traveler calls Latin America's coolest spot to relax.

Highlights

World class spa offerings including traditional Temezcal rituals, on-site dining by Jorge Vellejo

Who Should GO

Holistics who enjoy a healthy dose of culture and cuisine

Best Time to Visit

December-April

Shou Sugi Ban House

Southampton, New york

Putting the east in out east, the architecture at this Southampton enclave is salt box meets ryokan, but the Japanese influence is mostly felt in Shou Sugi Ban's holistic and sensory approach to wellness. Instead of trekking up, up. up into scenic hills like you might at other retreats, you'll start the day with tea meditation and a guided beach walk; meals, which are designed by Noma co-founder Mads Refslund, are mostly plant-based, and incorporate those magic blue-zone ingredients, prepared with a Japanese bent. "Shou Sugi Ban" describes the process of  strengthening wood by setting it afire, but the only thing we're burning is rubber as we floor it east on I-495.

Highlights

The east coast's most innovative spa offerings, heavily influenced by Japanese tradition

Who Should GO

Those looking for retreat-style wellness opportunities

Best Time to Visit

Year-round