Telegraph Travel, Thermia Palace Slimming, Slovakia
02 January 2010
Spa holidays: shake off the festive excess. What better way to begin the New Year than a stay at a spa?
Adriaane Pielou offers some effective options.....
In the cold light of 2010, it's all too obvious that Christmas and New Year parties have taken their toll. Your waistband is so tight you could scream, your bottom looks big in everything and your complexion is a whiter shade of pale.
It is going to take more than the cabbage soup diet to sort it out. Where can you go to get professional help with detoxing your system and getting rid of the extra pounds?
Given the thousands of spas that have opened over the past decade, finding one that will undertake to put you on a strict, supervised, low-calorie regime for a week should be straightforward. Not so, surprisingly. Comparatively few spas specialise in detox and weight loss treatments, but the following – which span the price range from good value to outrageously expensive – promise a holiday setting as well as weight loss.
It is going to take more than the cabbage soup diet to sort it out. Where can you go to get professional help with detoxing your system and getting rid of the extra pounds?
Given the thousands of spas that have opened over the past decade, finding one that will undertake to put you on a strict, supervised, low-calorie regime for a week should be straightforward. Not so, surprisingly. Comparatively few spas specialise in detox and weight loss treatments, but the following – which span the price range from good value to outrageously expensive – promise a holiday setting as well as weight loss.
Hotel Thermia Palace, Piestany, Slovakia
The sulphurous local thermal waters and mud play a key part in the slimming treatments at this old-world, grand spa hotel built in 1912 and renovated in 2007, with 111 rooms surrounded by gardens. The hotel is linked to the Irma spa, also restored, where you can wallow beneath the stained-glass windows of the domed Mud Pool and inhale deeply in the Salt Cave. Staffed by doctors, it continues to cater for state-funded patients who filled the spa during the Communist era, though it now also draws other nationalities. It represents value for money, with good facilities and well-trained, English-speaking, if somewhat gruff, staff.
* A week including all meals, daily treatments, diagnostic tests, flights and transfers from Bratislava costs £1,250 from Wellbeing Escapes (0845 602 6202; www.wellbeingescapes.co.uk)
* A week including all meals, daily treatments, diagnostic tests, flights and transfers from Bratislava costs £1,250 from Wellbeing Escapes (0845 602 6202; www.wellbeingescapes.co.uk)
