Gulo's Thermal Spa Treatment

We finally got to the thermal spa that we've been wanting to visit for two months. I formed a party of four that included my niece, myself and two of my teaching colleagues, Katie and Anna. I reserved a room for one hour for 3-5 people that had a hot and cold pool and a sauna for 200 GEL ($75), which is a decent price when you split it for four people.

On the day we were supposed to go to the spa, my apartment heater and water heater stopped working. So I had to take an ice-cold shower because suddenly the snow weather decided to migrate from northern Europe to southern Caucasus and it became much colder both inside and outside. Because of that, the thermal bath was even more of a welcome experience.

My niece and I arrived at Gulo Baths on Abano St. about 20 minutes earlier and it took us some time to find the right spa (there's six separate baths in the complex, run by different companies). When we finally found the right spa and met our friends, it was five minutes before the reserved time.

We also requested a scrub for an additional 15GEL per person. The three of us had to rent a towel for 5GEL - only Katie was smart enough to bring her own. So the total cost for everything came up to 295GEL ($110).

The spa provides plastic shoes at the bath, so we didn't have to worry about that. Except that the shoes were all mismatched in sizes and colors, and my niece and I had a good laugh about that. We undressed quickly to our swimsuits (it is recommended to wear a two-piece/bikini so that you could easily take the top off for the scrub) and went into the pool area.

Tbilisi is famous for its baths in this particular spot. The legend has it that this is actually how the city started, with King Vakhtang Gorgasali discovering the thermal sulfur spring that had healing qualities after one of his battles. The Gulo Baths are located right across from Gorgasali's monument on the other side of the Mtkvari River. In their current state, the baths were clearly built by the Ottomans, as the architecture, layout inside, and the mosaic shows.

We've heard a lot about these baths having sulfur in the water so we were expecting strong smell and ruined towels (that's why we didn't bring our own). But there was no smell and the steam from the hot pool was so inviting! Especially when we saw snowflakes falling through the open roof window into the pool. I wish I took my camera inside to take that surreal picture of snowflakes entering and melting half-way through in hot steam.

I immediately got into the hot pool and felt how my body was happy about the soft hot water washing all over it. It was like being in a steamy paradise, enveloped in the warmth of the silky smooth water.

Everyone got into the hot pool and we just chatted to catch up about our teaching and life in Tbilisi. About five minutes in I decided to go into the cold water pool because I knew if I'd get too relaxed in the hot pool I won't ever be able to plunge myself into the cold water and miss out on that part of the experience.

My mistake was going into it slowly. I stepped into the cold pool with one leg, up to about a knee, and immediately felt a million tiny cold needles piercing into my skin. My face showed it all.

"You have to take a plunge!" Katie said, "don't torture yourself!" She counted back for me, 3-2-1 and I plunged into the cold water. I jumped out of it immediately and plummeted myself into the hot water again. Now I felt more needles, but they were hot and all over my body, creating an unusually pleasant tingling sensation. Over our entire 5o minutes in the pool area I took a plunge five more times, when I felt I was getting a little too warm in the hot pool. Regrettably, we never made it to the sauna.

About 10 minutes in, a woman came in to give us a scrub. My niece went first and out of the corner of my eye I noticed how efficient and professional the spa employee was: Lie down, turn over, turn over back again, sit, stand up, you are done!

We went one after another, not wasting anyone's time. I was the last one and oh woman, what a feeling it was! She first scrubbed my entire body on the back with a glove soaked in something pleasantly abrasive, then "turn over" did the same on the front, rinse off, back to the back again, and follow up with a soapy massage with lots of herbs (I clearly smelled rosemary), turn over for the front, sit down to be rinsed off the soapy water, stand up for the second rinse-off, you are done!

All this time, I felt like my body was a piece of butter someone is molding into something worthy. The sensation was so nice, I said to the woman at the end, "You have magic hands!" She smiled, grateful, and said she'd pop up on a 10-minute-left-of-the-hour mark so that we could have enough time to dry and dress. Before she did, I did two more plunges into the cold and hot pools.

It really was a nearly divine experience. I wish every woman could spoil her body with treatments like this, to feel renewed and energized. I'm definitely going back there at least a couple more times while I'm in Tbilisi.