Experience I SPA & WELLNESS
HAMMAM HEAVEN Gather your friends and get your kit off in a traditional Turkish steam bath WORDS JAYNE D’ARCY
PHOTOGRAPHY HEPBURN BATHHOUSE AND SPA
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am a huge fan of the hammam. If there’s one around I’ll happily abandon my children and clothes and get straight into it (in Turkey it seemed okay to do that; the women in the hammam practically adopted my son. In Melbourne it’s more about booking a babysitter). My first introduction to the hammam was in Paris: a huge one hides inside the Paris Mosque. You gather your friends and pick the right day (men and women have different days), strip off (almost entirely) then disappear into a huge wet area and heat up in the surrounding steam and by pouring hot water over yourself (and your friends, it’s very communal).
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39 When you’re hot and sweaty enough, you cover yourself in savon noir (a thick, brown jelly-like substance), wash it off, then wait in a queue for a super-strong woman to rub the skin off your body with a mitt. Shower the grey rolls of dead skin off, and you feel cleaner than the day you were born, even if at the Paris Mosque at least, you might feel a little roughly-handled. Hepburn Bathhouse and Spa’s new hammam is not quite like that. Firstly, the actual hammam room is inside The Sanctuary, a unisex space featuring a generous round salt pool, a large spa with jet couches as well as a new, almost-outdoor, creek-side bathing spa and a plunge pool.
If there’s one around I’ll happily abandon my children and clothes and get straight into it
It’s not conducive to taking off your clothes. In fact, the room may just look like another steam room – albeit one decorated in sparkling brass with a glittery ceiling. It’s got two solid benches, both with taps at one end, and a small stone sink opposite the glass entrance door. On first glance you may wonder what it’s all about.
12/09/2016 2:45 PM