• Silk Day Spa

  47 West 13th Street, 212-255-6457; silkdayspa.com

  “Urban spas” are opening faster these days than Carrie took back Big—after all, anyone with a cot and a few candles can rent a room and call it a spa. One standout, though, is the five-month-old Silk Day Spa, with its clusters of bamboo stalks, cool stone tiles, and layers of gauzy fabrics. At this below-ground oasis, energy-balancing Eastern practices are combined with the West’s focus on skin care and muscle tone to produce transporting treatments like the Silk Emperor/Empress, a deluxe indulgence for two that comprises a deluge shower, hot-tub soak, reflexology, body scrub, body mask, and Silk Melt Away Massage. Now that’s a spa.

From the 2004 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine