The Top 12 Things to Do Near Blackbird
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A château-style health spa and retreat less than an hour from San Diego, built with actual French structures shipped over stone by stone, including a centuries-old chapel. The 32 private villas and manicured grounds lean hard into the Provençal fantasy, while the programming runs from interval training to trapeze yoga. Notably, they feed you real bread and real coffee. Vogue named it one of the 100 Best Spas in the World, and Oprah's a regular.
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Twenty-five miles of private hiking trails wind through the property before you've even booked a massage, which tells you something about the scale of this all-inclusive wellness retreat outside San Diego. The Golden Door has been doing the spa week thing since before it was a thing, and it carries that history lightly: think summer camp for people whose summers cost considerably more. Vogue named it among the 100 Best Spas in the World.
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The spa inside the Parker Palm Springs calls itself the Palm Springs Yacht Club, which is exactly as absurd as it sounds for a property landlocked in the desert. Jonathan Adler designed it, so expect nautical whimsy alongside the saltwater pool, eucalyptus steam rooms, and saunas. Treatments are personalized and nearly all end with a scalp massage. Vogue named it one of the 100 best spas in the world.
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A spa where the treatments are essentially a love letter to the cliffs outside: coastal sage scrubs, pine exfoliation, and seawater hydrotherapy baths that borrow directly from the landscape. The champagne facial, using yeast extracts, sounds like a premise from a sketch show but draws a loyal following. A Forbes Four Star property, and the kind of afternoon that makes driving back to reality feel genuinely inconvenient.
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Larry Ellison's Palm Springs compound is the backdrop, but the spa at Sensei Porcupine Creek runs on a different philosophy than most desert retreats. The pitch is data-driven wellness, with guides who are actual behavior-change scientists rather than people in linen who hand you cucumber water. You can go deep on biometrics, or fill the day with treatments and pool time and call it research. Vogue named it among the 100 best spas in the world.
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