I arrive on the Italian island of Ischia on the most beautiful autumn day. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and I am happy. I am here to spend a couple of days at a spa and am endeavouring to look ten years younger. I think it’ll be an uphill struggle: I am 40 and have four children – the eldest is 11, the youngest six months. Every day in every way I feel exhausted. When I tell the kids why I am going away, they boggle at me. ‘You’re going to look ten years younger?’ snorts my eldest. ‘That’s just not possible.’
As I arrive at the five-star Regina Isabella hotel, I am determined to prove him wrong. I am going to sleep and eat and relax in this hotel that was once a favourite haunt of the international jet set in the 1950s. Guests at the time included Elizabeth Taylor, Helena Rubinstein, Maria Callas, Charlie Chaplin and Clark Gable. On my arrival, the concierge leads me through a mass of long corridors all decked out in glistening marble. I can see at least two pools. He tells me at length about how Ischia is special because of its thermal waters and healing mud. ‘It all comes from the volcano,’ he says waving his hand upwards. ‘Is it active?’ I ask him. ‘Yes,’ he says airily.
Once I am ensconced in one of the new Royal Suites that cling precariously to some high up bit of vertiginous rock – I am in Gina Lollobrigida, my next-door neighbour is in Claudia Cardinale – I decide I will take a relaxing bath. But when I go to run it, the bath is very low one end and much higher the other and the water that comes out of the holes in the side is earth-coloured and tastes salty. I phone the concierge. ‘It is thermal water,’ he says.
In fact, the entire regime at the Regina Isabella turns out to be confusing. I can’t work out how to draw the curtains, get the lights to work or find out the time. Eventually, I wander down to the dining room, all swags and bows and a man playing the piano, to find the most bizarre menu I’ve seen in years. Nothing is à la carte, you have to choose from a set menu that serves things like omelette with asparagus and cream and beef consommé followed by a laden-down sweet trolley the likes of which I haven’t seen in years. It all seems a bit post-war.
The next day, the whole 1950s theme is reinforced when I go to the spa. I had expected a modern-day sort of a place with scented candles burning and dolphins’ mating music being piped through the walls. But no. This spa is really rather clinical. Various therapists walk around busily in white coats. Clients appear from rooms that seem to contain mysterious devices. One has what looks like a giant human-sized aquarium in it. Another is stuffed full of ancient nebulisers. By the time I meet the medical director, Dr Paolo Magrassi, I am almost shaking with terror.
But Dr Magrassi is charm personified. He tells me that this spa is not just for relaxation but also for people with medical complaints. Thermal medicine, it turns out, is standard practice in Italy. He lists all the reasons why people come to his spa – back complaints, skin complaints, respiratory problems, to recuperate and recover from an operation. His job is to assess their health and recommend a course of action. He tells me they have everything anyone would need – every type of practitioner from osteopaths to a Chinese medic, from massage therapists flown in from Pakistan to personal trainers. They do Feldenkrais and Laser Therapy and underwater massage and a whole range of other things.
