Over the past few years, Wallace and her boyfriend have made frequent visits to Scuol, the main town in Switzerland’s Lower Engadine Valley, to visit the artist Not Vital, who shows at the Manhattan gallery where Wallace’s boyfriend works. On each occasion they have discovered new areas of the Engadin Bad Scuol, the town’s magnificent thermal baths.

On our first visit to the baths, we thought we’d found heaven in the heated outdoor pool, with its jets, waterfalls and mountain views, and the enormous indoor pool ringed with hot tubs of varying temperatures. Then last summer we discovered the adults-only sauna area—each sauna hotter than the one before—in which we shed our swimsuits (and our inhibitions) to sweat away our worries.

It wasn’t until our most recent visit, last Christmas, that we finally entered the spa’s inner sanctum: the Roman-Irish Bath. Though it’s pricey ($60 USD per person) and requires a reservation, it’s by far the best bathing experience at Bad Scuol. The 15-step circuit, which combines the Roman preference for steam baths with the Irish tradition (they apparently liked the dry, hot air of saunas), takes more than two hours to complete and is supremely relaxing. (It also gives you more privacy: Each time slot is reserved for only four people.)

The entrance to Das Römische-Irische Bad (the Roman-Irish bath), hidden in the locker room, is like something out of a James Bond film. I swipe our key-card. Slowly, the marble wall in front of us, which has a screen of water cascading down it, folds inward. A blonde woman emerges and briskly ushers us in and the wall snaps shut behind us. She gives us each a toga-like towel, a pair of plastic sandals, and instructions to remove our suits, shower off and meet in the sauna.

We do as we’re told.

In the sauna, we sit and await further instruction. As beads of sweat trickle down our bodies, we soon follow the example of the other couple present and recline on wooden chaises. Fifteen minutes pass before a (fully clothed) therapist retrieves us, and leads us to a room with floor-to-ceiling windows and views of the Alps.

Behind closed doors
My therapist, in his forties with long hair and a kind, wrinkled face, tells me to shower and then lie face up on the massage table without my sandals. Soon, he’s soaping me up and gently exfoliating my entire body with a scrub brush. This is just a job to him, I think, trying to relax. He suds up naked women all day—he must be bored with it! Gently, he massages my right arm, releasing long-held tension from typing. I sigh. But my reverie ends abruptly with two words: “Turn over!” After scrubbing my back, the exfoliator gives my shoulders an intense rubdown. Then it’s back in the shower for a rinse before hitting the next station, a toasty damfbad (steam bath).

So it goes for the next hour: 10 to 15 minutes in an even hotter damfbad, another shower, a soak in a luxurious marble mineral bath with jets, and then 10 minutes in the larger central mineral bath, decorated with frescoes of mermaids and bull heads.

At this point I decide to bend the rules.

After the mineral bath (a disappointingly cool 93 degrees), you’re supposed to shock your system with a dip in the freezing plunge pool. But the tepid bath has left me feeling chilly, so I sneak back into the hottest steam room. My boyfriend follows. Though two other couples shoot us disapproving glances, we stay longer than they do, waiting until my skin is rosy to resume the ritual with the cold plunge.

Heavy-lidded
At the drying-off and “creaming” station (where you slather your skin with lotion), my exfoliation therapist reappears to scold us for our impertinence. We can’t return to previous steps, he says—it interrupts the ritual for other guests.  (Stupid Americans!) But all is quickly forgiven. “You will love this next part,” he promises. “You lie down and stare at the mountains for half an hour. It is beautiful and relaxing.”

Another uniformed staffer throws our damp togas into a bin and escorts us to the window-lined resting room, where others are already dozing on angled beds. We are each wrapped in a warmed sheet and a yellow blanket, and finally, we’re left alone. I gaze out at the Alpine peaks for just a moment before my eyelids grow heavy and I surrender to a deep sleep.