In this issue

Finding the world's living water traditions:

• The Pause that Refreshes · United States

• Budapest's Bathhouse Empire · Hungary

• Japan's Onsen Towns · Japan

• Iceland's New Lagoons · Iceland

• Morocco's Hammam Ritual · Morocco

• Finland: Sauna as Birthright · Finland

• How to Take the Waters: A Practical Guide · Worldwide

• Bringing It Home: Recreating the Ritual

• Where in the World: Resources

Soaking it all in

Before spas had menus, they had seasons. People traveled, sometimes for weeks, to sit in healing waters at a certain time of year because they believed, and modern balneology has since confirmed in many cases, that mineral-rich water genuinely eases joint pain, improves circulation, and calms the nervous system. 

What's striking is how consistent the ritual is across cultures and throughout the world that never spoke to each other: heat, then cold, then food, then rest. Hungarians built it into bathhouse architecture. The Japanese built it into the ryokan dinner. Scandinavians built it into the sauna-then-lake plunge. And in the Allegheny Mountains, my own family built it into a week four generations ago that we can’t imagine missing to this day.

This issue is about that feeling and the long line of cultures that built entire ways of life around it. Long before "wellness" was a thing, people gathered at springs, in bathhouses, around steam because the water asked something of them: slow down, sit still, talk to the stranger next to you. The ritual was never really about the temperature. It was about what happens to people when they stop moving.

We've paired each tradition with the food, tea, or drink that has always come after the water — because no culture that perfected bathing ever forgot to feed the people doing it.

— Pam Miller, Editor-in-Chief

PS. Do you have an experience to share? Let us know!

UNITED STATES · COAST-TO-COAST

The pause that refreshes

Mineral baths are as much a part of America’s history as its famed landmarks. On the East Coast, The Greenbrier has welcomed guests to its sulfur springs since 1778, making it one of America's oldest resort traditions. The mineral water that gives White Sulphur Springs its name was long believed by visiting families, and later by 19th-century physicians, to relieve everything from rheumatism to nervous ailments. The resort grew around that belief, expanding from a single spring into one of America's great resort hotels.

The ritual hasn't changed much over the years: soak, unwind, indulge in relaxing treatments, then emerge for a meal that takes the rest of the evening. It is, by design, a place that asks you to slow to its pace rather than the other way around. But the Greenbrier is hardly alone in the U.S. 

In truth, America has a constellation of historic spring towns, most from the same 19th-century wave of "taking the waters" tourism. About thirty minutes from The Greenbrier, the Omni Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia, also immerses guests in warm mineral pools. In Hot Springs, Arkansas, Bathhouse Row is a National Historic Landmark, and several of the original bathhouses are once again open to the public. Saratoga Springs, New York, where the mineral baths once drew the entire social calendar of the Gilded Age north for the summer. 

Heading west to Ojo Caliente, New Mexico, where the mineral springs (iron, lithia, soda, and arsenic, each said to have a different effect) have been used continuously since long before European settlers arrived. Not surprisingly, California’s natural mineral baths let you soak in historic geothermal spas and restorative sulfur springs, many of which are ideal for a day trip or a longer getaway.

Price Range: $60–$300 per soak or treatment · How to Book: Direct, or through resort spa reservations 

Learn more about the most beautiful hot spring resorts in the U.S.

A ritual pairing: Mountain tea and mint julep culture

After the water, the Greenbrier's tradition leans into old Southern hospitality: afternoon tea service in the main lobby, complete with bite-sized gifts from the pastry chef. Others partake in a proper mint julep or the signature peach margarita. Either way, it is not subtle, and it is not meant to be.

Soak for less

The historic resorts are just one way to experience this rejuvenation. The Roosevelt Baths & Spa in Saratoga Springs, New York, opened in 1935 as part of a vast preservation project and still offers an affordable hydrotherapy experience in mineral water. In Idaho, Burgdorf Hot Springs is a budget-conscious lodge with natural mineral pools, a few hours outside Boise. And Chena Hot Springs Resort outside Fairbanks, Alaska, charges around fifteen dollars for a day pass to its outdoor mineral rock lake — one of the more memorable soaks in the country for the price of a movie ticket.

HUNGARY · BUDAPEST

A city built around its baths

Soaking is a civic institution, not an indulgence. 

This fairy-tale city sits atop more than a hundred thermal springs, and the tradition dates back to Roman times. The Ottomans elevated the experience, and the Habsburgs made the baths grand. Many of them are still in operation. Today, what makes Budapest's bath culture distinct is its understated nature. There's no hush, no spa robes, no candlelight. It’s as much a part of life as going to the gym.

Széchenyi, with its mustard-yellow Neo-Baroque facade, and Gellért, with its Art Nouveau tilework, are used daily by locals and visitors. It’s not uncommon to see bathers playing chess waist-deep in an outdoor thermal pool, just as their grandparents did.

Price Range: $25–$40 for a day pass · How to Book: Walk-in, or buy ahead online during peak season · Best Season: Year-round; the outdoor pools are especially memorable in winter, steam rising against the cold

Ritual pairing: Hungarian café culture

The bath is traditionally followed by coffee and pastry at one of Budapest's grand old cafés — New York Café or Gerbeaud, both relics of the same Habsburg era as the baths themselves. For the more adventurous, a small glass of pálinka, the local fruit brandy.

JAPAN · THE ONSEN TOWNS

Where bathing has its own etiquette and its own geography

Immersed in comfort and culture

Japan sits on enough volcanic activity to support thousands of onsen, and entire towns — Hakone, Kusatsu, Beppu — exist primarily because of them. The ritual is precise: wash thoroughly before entering, never bring soap into the water itself, and the bath is just one part of a larger evening that unfolds at a traditional ryokan inn.

That evening, typically, includes a multi-course kaiseki dinner served in your room or a private dining space, built around what's seasonal and local — much the way the closed-door dinners we featured in our last issue are built around a chef's daily market trip. The bath, the dinner, and the sleep that follows on a tatami floor are really one continuous ritual, not three separate activities.

Onsen, Japan's natural hot springs, are central to the country's wellness culture. Kusatsu Onsen in Gunma Prefecture boasts the largest flowing water volume of all hot springs in Japan and has been ranked the country's #1 hot spring for 18 consecutive years, centered around its open-air Yubatake square. Near Tokyo, Hakone offers ryokans with open-air baths and, on clear days, views of Mount Fuji (https://www.japanhighlights.com/japan/best-onsens), while Beppu on Kyushu is known for having the largest volume of hot spring water in the country, plus its surreal "Hells," dramatic geothermal sites with bubbling mud pools and cobalt-blue waters (https://www.firebirdtours.com/blog/best-onsen-towns-in-japan).

For charm and accessibility, Kinosaki Onsen in Hyogo Prefecture features seven tattoo-friendly hot spring baths within a town steeped in 1,300 years of tradition (https://visitkinosaki.com/), and Kurokawa Onsen in Kyushu offers wooden ryokans and open-air baths that blend naturally into the landscape (https://lettersfromasia.com/japanese-hot-springs/). Most onsen require full nudity rather than swimwear, so it's worth checking etiquette and tattoo policies before visiting.

Price Range: $250–$600 per night, ryokan with dinner included · How to Book: Direct, or through a ryokan-specialist agency, as many don't take international bookings easily · Best Season: Winter, for the contrast of snow against steaming water

Ritual Pairing: Kaiseki and Tea Ceremony

The connection between bathing and tea runs deep in Japanese culture — both are built on attentiveness and seasonal awareness. Many ryokan offer a quiet tea service after the bath, before dinner, as a kind of palate and mind reset.

ICELAND · THE GEOTHERMAL LAGOONS

A New Tradition Built on Very Old Geology

The Blue Lagoon started it. A new generation of lagoons is reinventing it.

Iceland's geothermal water isn't a spa amenity here — it's the literal byproduct of the country's energy infrastructure, and Icelanders have been soaking in runoff and natural hot pots for generations. The Blue Lagoon turned that into a global phenomenon in the 1990s, and the country has since built a second wave of lagoons — Sky Lagoon near Reykjavik, Forest Lagoon up north — designed with the same striking infinity-edge views but a quieter, more local feel.

The Icelandic ritual borrows the Scandinavian heat-then-cold sequence, often ending in a genuinely cold plunge or an outdoor shower in near-freezing air, which locals insist is the entire point.

Price Range: $60–$150 per visit · How to Book: Online in advance, especially for Blue Lagoon, which frequently sells out · Best Season: Winter, for the chance of the northern lights overhead while soaking

Ritual Pairing: Skyr and Fish Stew

Afterward, the traditional refuel is skyr, Iceland's thick cultured dairy product, or a bowl of plokkfiskur, a humble fish-and-potato stew that's been Icelandic comfort food for generations.

MOROCCO · THE HAMMAM

A Ritual of Scrubbing, Steam, and Conversation

Part bath, part social institution, part deep exfoliation you'll wish you'd discovered sooner

The hammam predates the modern spa by centuries, rooted in Roman bathing tradition and refined through Islamic culture, where ritual cleanliness made bathhouses a near-daily institution in cities across North Africa and the Middle East. A traditional hammam visit involves steam, a black soap exfoliation, and a vigorous full-body scrub from an attendant that leaves skin remarkably soft — a far cry from the gentle pampering Western spas tend to offer.

In Marrakech and Fez, both grand historic hammams and intimate neighborhood ones are open to visitors, and the experience varies considerably between a luxury riad's private hammam and a public neighborhood one, both worth trying for very different reasons.

Price Range: $20 (local) to $150 (private riad) · How to Book: Walk-in for local hammams; reserve ahead for riad spas · Best Season: Year-round; especially welcome after a day in the souks

Ritual Pairing: Mint Tea

Moroccan mint tea — green tea, fresh mint, a notable amount of sugar — is the universal close to a hammam visit, often served on a rooftop terrace as the call to prayer drifts over the city.

FINLAND · SAUNA CULTURE

Where the Sauna Isn't a Luxury, It's Furniture

A national institution with more saunas than cars

Finland has roughly one sauna for every two people, and sauna culture there is so foundational that UNESCO added it to its list of intangible cultural heritage. The ritual is simple and uncompromising: intense dry heat, often with water thrown on hot stones to produce steam (löyly), followed by a plunge into a lake, the sea, or in winter, a hole cut into the ice.

Helsinki has brought the tradition into the city with public saunas like Löyly and Allas Sea Pool, but the more memorable version is still rural: a wood-fired sauna cabin on a lake, ideally with no phone signal for miles.

Price Range: $20–$40 for public saunas; lakeside cabins vary widely · How to Book: Walk-in for city saunas; book lakeside cabins well ahead in summer · Best Season: Winter, for the ice-plunge contrast; summer, for the long light over the lake

Ritual Pairing: Coffee and Smoked Fish

Finns traditionally follow a sauna with strong coffee and something smoked — fish, sausage, even cheese — often cooked over the same fire that heated the sauna stones.

BRINGING IT HOME

Recreating the Ritual

You don't need a plane ticket to borrow the parts that matter most

Not every version of this ritual requires travel. A few ways to bring a little of it home, in ascending order of commitment:

The fifteen-minute version. A hot bath with a generous amount of Epsom salt approximates the magnesium-rich water of many mineral springs reasonably well, and the heat-then-cool-down sequence is the same principle Finns and Icelanders rely on — just end with a few minutes somewhere cool rather than jumping straight into bed.

The steam version. A facial steamer or even a hot shower with the bathroom door closed and a few drops of eucalyptus oil borrows from hammam culture's emphasis on steam before anything else.

The real investment. Home infrared saunas and portable steam tents have become considerably more affordable and better-made in recent years, and a few hundred dollars buys a genuinely good approximation of a Finnish sauna session, used two or three times a week.

The part everyone forgets. Whatever version you choose, don't skip the ritual that comes after — a proper cup of tea, a small glass of something, a few minutes of quiet before returning to a phone. That pause is, in every culture in this issue, the actual point.

A PRACTICAL GUIDE

How to Take the Waters

What to know before you go, wherever the water is

01 — Hydrate before and after. Heat and mineral water are dehydrating; this is the most commonly ignored rule and the most common reason people feel unwell afterward.

02 — Learn the local sequence. Japan's wash-before-you-soak rule, Finland's heat-then-cold-plunge, Morocco's steam-then-scrub — each tradition has an order, and locals notice when visitors skip it.

03 — Don't rush the food that follows. In every culture in this issue, the meal or drink after the water is treated as part of the ritual, not an afterthought. Plan for it.

04 — Ask before you assume modesty rules. Nudity norms vary enormously, from communal Finnish saunas to fully suited Icelandic lagoons to gender-separated Moroccan hammams. A quick question at check-in avoids any awkwardness.

Spa etiquette

Here are a few universal courtesies you’ll want to be aware of:

• Shower before entering any communal water, everywhere, always.

• Keep voices low in bathhouses and onsen; these are still considered restorative spaces, not social ones, in many cultures.

• Phones stay in the locker room.

• Tip attendants in cash where service is hands-on, such as hammam scrubs.

• If a culture's bathing customs feel unfamiliar, ask rather than guess — staff are almost always happy to explain.

RESOURCES

Where in the World?

There are countless ways to find living water traditions wherever you travel. A few places to start:

The Greenbrier — Five generations of one editor's family can't be wrong.

Hot Springs National Park — America's original "spa town," preserved as a National Historic Landmark.

Roosevelt Baths & Spa — A genuinely affordable way to soak in Saratoga's historic mineral water.

Széchenyi Baths — Budapest's grandest, and still a local favorite.

Sky Lagoon — Iceland's newer wave of geothermal lagoons.

Japan Ryokan Association — A reliable starting point for booking an onsen ryokan stay.

Visit Finland: Sauna — An overview of public and rural sauna culture.

NOTE: Prices are approximate and subject to seasonal change.

_{Tapestry occasionally uses AI tools like Claude for background research, structuring outlines, and brainstorming. Every edition is fully written, fact-checked, and verified by a human.}