I’ve got to try this. Now beer can literally double your pleasure. In the little Czech town of Chodova Plana the world’s first beer spa has opened. I mean, you actually get right down into a big vat of warm dark lager and soak. Don’t drink the beer, please—it’s only about 2% alcohol. Just order a cool one from the attendants. It’s a real brewery, and you’ll get a fine example of good Czech beer.

Afterward you get the usual spa accoutrements, including a wrap and massage. Here, and here only, you’ll get the massage with oils made from beer’s ingredients.

Chodova Plana is near Prague in an area renowned for its healing spring waters. The waters’ benefits seem to be amplified by being brewed into beer. The spa seems to be most helpful to those with circulatory and skin problems (I mentioned not drinking the beer!). The town’s brewery is very old, having opened in 1573, and for centuries the area’s doctors have recommended the beer itself as a palliative. Internally applied, of course.

German, Czech, British, and American tourists have responded strongly. In the first three months over a thousand people have been “treated” at the brewery’s spa.

I can’t wait to say “Cheers” while up to my palate in beer.

See you there!