enRoute


	ENROUTE TV ENROUTE FM MEDIA KIT AIR CANADA LINKS WRITERS' GUIDELINES

UNSPORTSMANLIKE CONDUCT

There’s more to Greece than the Olympics, ouzo and island hopping. (Like ancient spas, design hotels... and flying monks?)

Text: DOUGLAS ANTHONY COOPER

1 | 2 | 3 | APR

Am I the only one who finds the Olympics a bit underwhelming? The thought of going all the way to Athens to see world-class athletes exhibiting human excellence, breaking centuries-old records, jumping distances heretofore unique to frogs… it all strikes me as a bit of a snooze. Now ancient Greek spas – that’s a subject I can warm to. While everybody else is watching prepubescent gymnasts, I join the real athletes – the ones who have the stamina to steam, semi-comatose, in historic thermal hot springs. My second event in these demanding games is in the boutique hotel biathlon: Here I sleep and dine in the first two designer hotels in Greece.

I know, I know: Some of you will be hell-bent on experiencing athletic overachievement. And you’ll probably have the desire after coming all this way to check out some crumbling marble. So for your hit of the ancient and athletic, follow my example and complement the modern mega-sponsored five-ring circus with a visit to the ghosts who hang out in the decayed stadiums where it all began. Go ruin-hopping through Greece’s famed athletic history, far from the logo-sporting, flag-waving jingoism in the capital. Back then, the athletes – unfortunately, now dead – at least had the good taste to perform in the nude.

Greece is not recognized – not in this millennium at least – as a major spa location. The subterranean waters in Edipsos, however, have been bubbling away for a long, long time, and the early spas were mentioned by the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th century BC. (Just for the hell of it, in AD 2003, I attend a spa conference in the Peloponnese where major spa experts from Central Europe are brought in to explain how to build swank Greek alternatives to Baden-Baden – a project that is very much in the works.)

The European spa has traditionally been a very different concept from the North American and Southeast Asian variety. The latter two are devoted to health of the spiritual and corporate variety and cater mostly to the Already Well. The Euro spa, on the other hand, has always had a medicinal component: They cater to the Wannabe Well. You actually drink the spa water; it’s supposed to be curative. (It is also, frankly, nauseating.)

So yeah, I do the Parthenon – it’s more interesting than the pictures on all those coffee cups – but once I’ve finished with the merely sublime, I head north into mainland Greece then hop to the island of Evia, where I chill (well, boil) in the Mother of All Spas.

The current Thermae Sylla Spa in Edipsos was built in 1896. The building itself is a grand palatial affair with a central tower; it overlooks the waterfront and has been designated a historical monument. Historical is right: The spa waters here were noted by Aristotle and are said to have restored Heracles’ strength when he was going through a rough period. In more recent times, Greta Garbo and Winston Churchill hung out here (although, presumably, not together).

Thermae Sylla, however, after being renovated in 1999, has moved forward from its traditional roots as a medicinal facility to come in line with North American innovations: that is, culturally sensitive massage, enhanced by chic quasi-mystical concepts and expensive creams and oils. Most of Europe will follow suit, I suspect, if they want their spas to draw the under-80 crowd. And so the Old World has welcomed the New Age, and Mozart is gradually being integrated with Enya.

In Thermae Sylla, I enjoy a multimud hammam. A blue-tiled chamber, with a dome of stars overhead, is dedicated exclusively to this Byzantine steam-bath tradition (by way of Sedona, Ariz.). Blue-tiled seats are prespread with magical mud. A significant issue, unfortunately, is that throughout this otherwise relaxing experience, I am wrestling to keep myself from sliding onto the floor. (Could we please have some buttock traction in the hammam chamber? Thanks in advance.)

A dish is presented to me, with three scoops of ice cream: vanilla, mocha and chocolate. Now this is different! As I prepare to sample first the vanilla, my distressed hammam attendant signals in fluent sign language: "No, you idiot; that’s mud!" So it is. Three varieties of healthful mud, which I spread over my entire body before stewing in the hammam as the lights slowly change. For the grand finale, artificial rain emerges miraculously from the dome overhead. Not all of the other treatments are quite so atmospheric, but they are all rigorous in their own way, and pleasant. Herodotus and Aristotle, as always, were onto something.

The real reason to come here, of course, is for the thermal springs. You don’t have to stay at Thermae Sylla to experience the very slightly radioactive but not the least bit harmful waters: They flow throughout Edipsos, and I even stand on the beach beneath a tiny, searing waterfall. Doctors are divided as to whether these waters have actual healing powers, but millions of pink Europeans can’t be wrong, can they?

1 | 2 | 3 | APR