Best Spa in the Caribbean

Barbados's Sandy Lane

The largest spa in the Caribbean is a 47,000-square-foot building with a waterfall in front that flows into the 7,500-square-foot resort pool. The entryway is an open, columned rotunda with a grand staircases descending to the spa level.

The 11 treatment rooms, which lie along a dimly lit, gently curving corridor, have their own bathrooms and showers. (They were designed for celebrities, who won't usually put up with using a locker room.) Nine of them have private gardens, and in three of those there are private outdoor hydrotherapy pools. In the public areas, space is used lavishly for effect.

The treatment-room corridor ends in a small rotunda that holds three tall creamy white amphorae, and the hydrotherapy pool is part of a faux-grotto stage set, with burly blocks of coral stone cut and dressed to evoke an architectural ruin.

The relax room and adjoining hydrotherapy pool is like a resort within a resort.  Crystal Laconium Steam Room, where an amethyst crystal is intended to transfer energy to you; aromatherapy steam shower; and hydro pool vitality beds, one hidden in a stone niche.

The two Hotel penthouses ($4,200) don't have a view of the beach, which is obscured by a line of trees. You're better off taking the 7,300-square-foot, five-bedroom villa ($15,000) built around a courtyard and with its own pool and butler, or a Luxury Ocean or one-bedroom Dolphin Suite.

Some of the world's top hotels/resorts were visited for ideas to make this a true Lux experience. Taking a cue from a hotel in Dubai (Sandy Lane won't say which one), tunnels  were dug beneath the buildings for the housekeeping and room-service carts-- so guests wouldn't see (or hear) them trundling down the halls.