Luxury Family Travel to Palm Beach
The best resort spas offer an exclusive haven amidst the bustle of families and friends vacationing, and The Spa at The Breakers is one of the best. Most of The Breakers’ guests and members are no strangers to wellness and fitness, and the newly expanded spa and fitness complex is comprehensive enough to offer an experience nearly matching a destination spa but with all of the family amenities a Five-Diamond resort offers. Two words: mom heaven.
The Breakers Spa Renovation
The Breakers just unveiled a new spa at the end of 2015 that is the result of a comprehensive $8 million renovation, and the results are more than spectacular.
Fittingly, The Breakers, known for its architectural grandeur inspired by Italian Renaissance buildings, brought a completely modern Italian feel to Palm Beach in this import to showcase the newest generation of Italian design.
The spa design is a sleek, minimalist, beautiful and mostly white and ivory. There’s a new nail and hair salon for essential beach pedicures and blow outs with windows overlooking the lawns.
Spa Lounges at the Breakers
The Spa at The Breakers is the kind of spa you could spend a full day in when you just needed to say, “World, let me get back to you.” It works equally well to experience alone, with friends, or a partner.
It has a beautiful coed lounge space offering one of the best snack selections I’ve ever seen at a spa. In addition to the meticulously skewered melon balls and super food medleys, you can pull open a freezer drawer and enjoy many flavors of Italian gelato if you’re feeling naughty; otherwise you can grab some skewers of frozen grapes and take them outside to listen to the fountain in a serene outdoor courtyard.
You wouldn’t even know the spa’s courtyard was right next to the sprawling pool complex as a large hedge (a Palm Beach landscaping specialty) separates the two spaces. A spa menu is available so that you can take a break between massage and facial on the white chaises and have lunch or a healthy snack before tearing into the tempting gelato buffet in the freezer.
The locker rooms are sleek and modern. Mother of pearl bowls hold crushed ice just outside showers so one can exfoliate the skin beforehand. This is said to reduce the appearance of cellulite.
The goddess of health, Hygiea, guards over those wrapped in cashmere throws reading Vogue with a nurturing gaze in the ladies’ lounge. It’s telling that the goddess of health reins here instead of Aphrodite. The Breakers Spa’s commitment to the holistic and natural is consistent.
The Breakers Spa Treatments and Products
The Breakers Spa uses three primary product lines.
Tammy Fender is a Palm Beach-based line of natural, botanical formulations. The newest lines are OSEA, a line based in Malibu named for its marine-based formulas with essential oils, and Erbe, imported from Italy which makes aromatherapy and phyto-therapy formulas that date back to the 16th century. The Spa at The Breakers is also the only US location to feature Erbe treatments.
There are many specialized treatment rooms at the spa, including rooms for couples. The Spa Suite includes a shower for two, a tub for two, and two massage tables with direct access to the spa courtyard outside.
The spa also offers a quartz massage table to enjoy the healing benefits of the quartz crystal to support the work of the massage. There’s a Libra Vichy shower for water treatments. It’s hard not to notice every design detail from the wooden treatment table to the spa’s hall lights.
My own facial treatment was the Vitamin C Facial from Erbe. Arriving from Boston in the height of winter, this facial was gentle and restorative, giving my skin an immediate relief from dryness and dullness.
Fitness at The Breakers
Working out at The Breakers is easy. The large gym called Ocean Fitness is above the Beach Club. It’s a fitness center with truly state-of-the-art equipment in addition to its oceanfront views. Spinning is offered most mornings on the terrace facing the water.
There are additional complimentary exercise class locations scattered throughout the resort, including a discrete yoga studio tucked away in the main building. There are approximately six to twelve classes offered each day in a range of current fitness trends: TRX, foam rolling, Barre, mat Pilates, and boot camp, for example.
There’s an adult-only pool, closest to the spa that works well for a child-free break or some laps, and the golf and tennis clinics are top notch.
Beauty at the Breakers
A new hair and nail salon was added to the spa renovation to serve members and resort guests. Clever guests can book a blowout immediately after some pool time and never step foot in the grand lobby with wet or frizzy hair.
Fairmont Grand Del Mar: Southern California’s Italian Influenced Jewel
All spa guests booking a facial, massage, or body treatment receive a complimentary makeup application at the Guerlain store inside the lobby shops. I enjoyed this amenity very much and loved the results, particularly because I discovered superior eyeliner to the one I had been using.
All in all, I found the spa and wellness program at The Breakers outstanding, complete with menus throughout the resort that catered to any special diets, even tasty composed vegan salads on the room service menu. Their onsite organic garden grows salad items and herbs for locavores to feel smug about.
I only wish that my day of spa and beauty had been three or four days longer. My children were so happy at Camp Breakers, running in the sun on the beautiful lawns while making friends, that I was able to put myself first for without any of the guilt.
I was hosted by The Breakers and The Breakers Spa, but these opinions are entirely my own.