A Perfect Face

82nd St. & Coastal Hwy.
Ocean City, Md.
410-524-2390
http://www.aperfectface.com

Scene
From the highway, this spa looks like a quaint beach house, with its peach exterior and white-railed porch. Inside a small fountain greets you, behind which there’s a well-stocked retail area offering a variety of promise-filled potions, like Bumble & Bumble hair care products and top-of-the-line Guinot and Skin-Ceuticals skin care. This is clearly where the well-kempt O.C. woman comes to spa.

The waiting area is living room-like, complete with chandelier, gas fireplace, deep-cushioned couch, and several sitting chairs. Here, clients can relax with complimentary tea, coffee, cookies—even champagne. With five manicure stations, three pedicure rooms, seven hair stations, and a private color and perm room, the first floor is abuzz with serious beauty in the making. But climb the carpeted staircase to the nine treatment rooms, including a Vichy shower room, and the harp music lilting through the hallways immediately shuts out the whine of the blow dryers. 

Pamper Your Purse
Desktop Massage and Manicure: spa manicure with a 10- to 15-minute head and neck massage at the manicure station, $45.

Splurge
Essence of Luxury: a European facial, Swedish massage, spa manicure, shampoo, and blow dry, $200.

Unique Services
It’s Starbucks for the skin. The spa’s newest treatment, Body Coffee Polish uses Body Coffee skin care products, which claim to have therapeutic benefits for skin problems ranging from acne to cellulite to eczema, $85. Or try the Youth Light 2010 facial that uses an innovative light therapy treatment to reach beneath the skin’s surface, where wrinkles, age spots, and sun damage occur, $130. 

Tips
There’s a private treatment room complete with a shower and shampoo area where the handicapped, elderly, or cancer patients can be pampered in privacy.

Spa By The Sea

46 Baltimore Ave. 
Rehoboth Beach, Del.
302-227-8640
http://www.thespabythesea.com

Scene
Follow the winding boardwalk that snakes behind Café Sole and Lotions and Potions, and you’ll find Spa by the Sea. A wrought-iron gate frames the white stucco bungalow with royal blue trim, and its patio is accented with tropical touches like tiki torches, palm tress, sling-back chairs, and island music.

Inside, the small space is weekend-beach-house casual. The walls in the reception area are dressed in sky blue, and the waiting area consists of royal blue and white-striped cushioned benches adorned with fish-print throw pillows. “This is a spa without an attitude,” remarked a regular having his nails done on a recent rainy spring day. And he’s right. Here you won’t find any uppity, overly made-up receptionists or faux Greco-Roman statuettes. Owner Tami Abbott is typically somewhere near the phones and addresses most regulars and first-timers alike as “Hon.”

Pamper Your Purse
Two-hour manicure and pedicure combo, $58.

Splurge
Sea Escape Package, a four-and-a-half-hour treatment that includes spa manicure and pedicure, European facial, and Swedish massage with lunch, $190. 

Unique Services
Go native by reserving a massage in one of the two outdoor, fully enclosed tiki huts. And for the consummate sun worshipper, the spa offers outdoor pedicures in a gazebo.

Tips
Avoid sitting at the main manicure station located directly near the entrance and receptionist desk, where you’d be hard pressed to relax amid the ringing phones and comings and goings. Instead, request one of the stations in the rear rooms behind the entrance area.

Interested in some pampering off the premises? For a $15 surcharge plus the regular cost of the massage service you request, the spa will send a massage therapist to your hotel, B&B, or beach house located anywhere from Bethany Beach to Lewes. 

The Bellmoor Spa

6 Christian St.
Rehoboth Beach, Del.
302-227-5800
http://www.thebellmoor.com

Scene
Housed on the second floor of Rehoboth’s poshest and newest hotel, the Bellmoor spa is a tiny facility. Softly lit, the reception area is sage green and sparsely but elegantly decorated with two sitting chairs, several Audubon prints, and a marble-topped table offering products for sale. Here clients can relax wrapped in a super-fluffy spa robe while enjoying a complimentary hot or cold cup of Elixir natural fruit, herb, and plant extract drinks. Within the reception area there is one manicure and pedicure station and three doors leading to the tiny but tidy treatment rooms. 

Pamper Your Purse
Come Clean Facial: a fifty-minute basic facial customized to the client’s skin needs. Includes skin analysis, cleansing, massage, steam, mask, and SPF application, $80.

Splurge
De-stress massage: a Swedish massage modified with anti-stress essential oils to melt away anxiety, $85 for 50 minutes; $125 for 80 minutes.

Unique Services
Sworn off the sun? Try their Instant Glow, an exfoliating salt scrub followed by an application of AuCourant, the same self-tanner used by the “Bay Watch” crew, followed by an SPF application, $155.

And if you can’t bear to be even briefly separated from the one you love, opt for the couples massage and get spoiled side by side, $160.

Tips
Hotel guests can request a fifty-minute in-room massage. And you can charge it to your room!  Since the spa is so small, it fills up quickly. It’s best to call several weeks ahead for an appointment.

Avenue Day Spa

110-A Rehoboth Ave.
Rehoboth Beach, Del.
302-227-5649
http://www.avenueinn.com

Scene
At the entrance, this spa, which adjoins the Avenue Inn, looks more like a store for lotions and other skin care items. With twenty to thirty lines of products in stock, you can bypass the compact waiting area, where complimentary herbal tea and spiced cider are offered.

The seven treatment rooms are all located off the narrow, mauve hallway in the rear of the store. The “pampering vibe” is low here, probably because the dizzying amount of products steal the space a traditional spa reserves for customers to stretch out and clear their minds. It also
didn’t help that, at the time of my visit, the receptionist put a customer on hold for at least five minutes to take a personal call. 

Pamper Your Purse
Customized European facial: includes a neck and back massage and light hand and foot massage, $80. 
Splurge Fango supreme body treatment: sea salt scrub blended with honey butter, followed by a lava mud wrap and a full body massage, $220.

Unique Services
Try the spa’s new Japanese hot stone therapy, combination of acupressure, heat therapy, and massage for a complete therapeutic treatment, $115.
Tied up in knots? Try the Thai massage, where the client lies on a mat rather than a table and is stretched by the masseuse. Call for price.

Tips
Since there are masseurs and masseuses, request which you prefer when you make your appointment. If you’ve only got a half hour, run in for a thirty-minute neck and body massage, $45, or a spa manicure, $25. 

Skynz

135 Second St.
Lewes, Del.
302-644-4084

Scene
You’ve got to love that this one-woman operation is housed directly above the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Skynz owner, Roz Skinner, keeps her one and only massage table in the middle of the light-filled, loft-like room, eclectically decorated with loads of plants, candles, a rocking chair; her office desk is right at the back of the room. But fret not, she always turns off her phone during a session. Skinner says that clients love the privacy and attention they get while here. “This isn’t the kind of place where clients are rushed,” she says. And best of all, you can stop in for a box
of caramels downstairs after your cellulite treatment. 

Pamper Your Purse
Absolutely Personal Facial: customized European facial suited to the client’s skin type, deep pore cleansing, extractions, exfoliation, as well as a face, neck, arm, and leg massage, $75.

Splurge
Any of the three mud wraps (ActiSea, Black Baltic, and European Rose), $100.   

Unique Services
Get your skin in shape for the beach with the Summer Special, a full body salt rub and wrap and a bikini wax, $110.

Tips
For a quick pampering fix, make an appointment for a hand and foot mask, $25, or a Skynz Refresher facial: cleansing, steam, exfoliation, mask, moisturize, $45.

Don’t want to leave the beach during prime tanning hours? Skinner takes evening appointments.