One of my most wistful travel regrets is not having time to soak at the old Turkish baths in Budapest. Just from the exterior architecture it's clear that the sublime lies within. A few years later in Istanbul, I took my first plunge. Kindly women mimed to get naked, led me around by the hand to various steamy rooms and hot pools, scrubbed me as though they wanted to reach bone, and likewise massaged with the strength of bodybuilders. It was wonderful.
A hammam is not just a spa: the communal aspect of the baths, the grand slabs of marble and geometric tiling simultaneously timeless and evocative of the distant past, the sense of being cloistered from the rest of the world -- it's special. Happily, there is such a place not far away, at the Mosquée de Paris, the oldest mosque in France. And one of my best friends lives just down the street.
We spent the morning catching up (in hushed tones, to preserve the calm), increasingly sedated by the eucalyptus vapor wafting by, wrapped in towels with sugary mint tea, in the half-light filtered through stained glass windows, beside a little burbling fountain. In case you're not perfectly sated after all that, you can get some baklava at the counter on the way out.
