The Amalfi is a place that surely needs no introduction. Oozing with Italian charm, it is a town and a coast of effortless beauty, its magnificently mountainous shoreline scattered with cobble-stoned medieval villages clinging to its sides like fondant coloured limpets. The food is sensational, the sun is warm and the waters of the Med sparkle – the very definition of la dolce vita.
The Hotel Santa Catarina is the town of Amalfi’s finest. Sitting high on the cliffside it looks down on the steep terraces where pink, white and ochre houses squeeze between lemon trees weighed down with fruit. From your sun-drenched balcony, you can watch all day long as ferries leave the tiny port for Positano, Naples or the Isle of Capri. And it’s very tempting to do exactly that – the charming and knowledgeable staff will ply you with a particularly interesting local wine or an irresistible pastry.
There’s a choice of restaurants (inside and out), a yoga pavilion and a lovely pool down by the sea surrounded by loungers. It is a place to linger, to relax, to enjoy the very Italian pleasure of dolce far niente (the joy of doing nothing). Who could ask for more?
If all of these delights, though, still don’t make you feel quite relaxed enough, Santa Catarina has a spa offering all kinds of delightful treatments. Don’t expect, however, to find here an extensive hydrotherapy area with every kind of heat treatment or underwater massage. This is, in fact, a tiny spa and, while it does have steam and sauna available, it focuses very much on treatments. After a quick scan of the spa menu I decided their signature massage “Amalfi Gold” was the one for me.
This is also described as a lemon massage – and that is precisely the name of what you might call Amalfi’s actual gold. Amalfi lemons (known as Sfusato Amalfitano) are huge, highly prized by chefs for their intense flavour and used as a rather attractive cup by the local ice cream sellers for that gelato al limone. Lemons have an uplifting, refreshing effect – a bit of a zing for the system – and as I was still definitely jet lagged from a previous trip and had been up since 2am that morning, this had to be the one for me.
My therapist, Ornella, took me into my comfortable treatment room and, once I had got ready, put a mask over my eyes and held her hands above my head so I could inhale that lovely lemony scent. This would be a light touch massage with long, slow strokes, Ornella explained, a massage designed to bring about a state of calm and relaxation.
The carrier oil for the massage was almond with lemon essential oil so that sweet citrus scent filled the air. It all seemed very appropriate. On my drive to Amalfi, I’d seen lemon trees everywhere – I passed them en route to the hotel, the fruit hanging on the trees like Christmas baubles. After the initial inhalation, Ornella massaged a drop of lemon oil into the pulse points on each wrist. And then came a bit of a twist.
Having drawn a line of warm oil from my breast bone down to my abdomen, I had a bit of an icy shock as cold slices of actual lemon were placed along the same line and pressed into the skin before Ornella covered me up with a towel to start the actual massage on my legs and feet. The lemons were lined up with my Chakra points and their cold and stimulating effect was designed to open up the Chakras before the massage and warm oil would calm and relax them. It’s not only the body that is soothed by this process, but the mind too. As I said, just what I needed.
After a very relaxing massage of my arms and legs, Ornella removed the lemons and gently massaged my abdomen before I turned over and she repeated the line of lemons, this time down my spine where they waited while my legs were massaged again, then removed for a gloriously relaxing back massage.
Feeling completely refreshed and relaxed, it was already late afternoon by the time I got back to the room and time to change for dinner. The main restaurant at Santa Catarina has very fine dining and, with the help of the wine waiter and I made my way steadily through a series of small, delicious courses, each accompanied by an equally delicious local wine. For the dessert? No contest really. It had to be gelato al limone.
Rooms at Hotel Santa Caterina start from €454 + VAT (approx. £388) per night, based on double occupancy. For more information or to book, please visit www.hotelsantacaterina.it.
