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Highlighting visually stunning public saunas from around the world.
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It started with a visit to a spa on a boat in Montreal, and ended with a floating camp built around a wood-fired sauna in a remote lagoon, 4,000km away.

Ten years ago, Dan and Lauren — the husband-and-wife team behind @tofinoboatingco — took inspiration from Bota Bota, a spa built into a 1950s ferry moored in the Old Port. Back home they had something Montreal didn’t: decades of exploring Clayoquot Sound by boat, and a quiet inlet with no road in.

Lemmens Inlet nearly cuts Meares Island in two. This is Tla-o-qui-aht territory — their 1984 blockade stopped the island’s old growth from being logged and created Canada’s first Tribal Park — and the camp sits on a long-term lease from the Tla-o-qui-aht.

Lagoon Float Camp is a short scenic ride from the Tofino marina: cedar sauna, fully equipped kitchen, bathroom, SUP boards, and hammocks strung across the deck. Heat up in the sauna, then step off the dock straight into the frigid waters of Clayoquot. Stay until dark and the sea otters come out to play under the platform.

Day trips are fully private: your group of 2 to 6 gets the whole camp for about 4 hours, boat transport included, May through October. Bring your own food and drinks; they provide everything else, even the ice. Or stay the night in the 14’ canvas bell tent with a queen bed and ride the tides up and down, surrounded by untouched old-growth forest and stars overhead.

From $400 CAD per group. Booking is by text or email only — no online calendar. This is Tofino, after all.

📷 @tofinoboatingco @jimmyphotos @ryanshabacon taken in Tofino, British Columbia by @etsauna

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4 months ago

A Moscow math student fell in love with Siberian banyas in the 1970s. Decades later, he brought one to the San Francisco Bay.

Mikhail Brodsky first stepped into a banya while logging trees on the Konda River in Western Siberia to make extra money. He was hooked. He started visiting every banya he could find, and eventually earned the nickname “Archimedes” at Sanduny, Moscow’s oldest and most famous bathhouse, for his knack for solving its problems.

Decades later, after moving to California to research at UC Berkeley, Brodsky was passed over for a department chair at SF State. The rejection pushed him to do something he actually cared about. The idea: build San Francisco a real public banya. His friends thought he’d lost it.

In 1999, he and Reinhard Imhof bought a lot near the old Hunters Point Shipyard with two friends and called it Banya 2000. It took 12 years to open. On New Year’s Eve 2011, Archimedes Banya finally welcomed its first guests.

Archimedes has it all. Three saunas, a steam room, cold plunge, hot tubs, a swimming pool, rooftop deck with skyline views, full spa, and a Russian-European café. Today it’s a blend of Greek laconica, Turkish hammam, German thermen, and Russian banya, all under one roof on the shore of San Francisco Bay. The signature service is venik platza: a leafy massage with bundles of fresh birch, oak, eucalyptus, and juniper. It’s the only place in California offering it every day they’re open.

$72 for 3 hours. 18+. Clothing optional after 6pm daily and all day Wed/Fri; swimsuits required otherwise. Open Mon, Wed-Fri 12pm-11pm; weekends 10am-11pm. Women’s night first Tuesday, men’s night third Tuesday of every month.

📷 @banyasf taken in San Francisco, California by @etsauna

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5 months ago

An 1800s ruin in Old San Juan, transformed into a bathhouse without erasing a thing.

The name says it all. Las Ruinas. Rather than renovate over the building’s history, founder Maxwell Khaghan and local designer Nicole Colón let the original structure lead. Exposed brick, raw textures, terracotta walls, arches, and natural light. “Every detail was designed to elevate what was already there,” Colón said, “without altering or manipulating its raw beauty.”

The result is an 11,000 sq ft bathhouse tucked into one of the oldest cities in the Americas: dry sauna, steam room, cold plunge at 48°F, thermal bath at 100°F, hot tub, and swimming pool. Complimentary tea lounge and smoothie bar.

Khaghan had been turning old buildings into boutique hotels for years, from Brooklyn Airbnbs to properties across Miami, the Berkshires, Colorado, and Mexico. But after a workout in Puerto Rico, he went looking for a place to sauna and recover, and couldn’t find one. So he bought a crumbling building on Calle de la Cruz and spent three years bringing it back.

Old San Juan was non-negotiable. The neighborhood’s colors, sounds, and history are the point.

$68 day pass, 2.5 hours. Open daily 8 AM to 7 PM. 18+.

📷 @lasruinaspr taken in San Juan, Puerto Rico by @etsauna

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7 months ago

The cold plunge is an oyster cage.

Glidden Point Oyster Farms sits on the Damariscotta River in Edgecomb, Maine, a stretch of water people have been harvesting shellfish from for thousands of years. The Wabanaki, who gave the river its name (“river of many fishes”), left behind shell middens along these banks that grew 30 feet deep and 1,600 feet long. The farm was started in 1987 by Barb Scully, one of the original oyster farmers in the region, and today produces some of the most celebrated oysters in the country.

Jackie Stratton’s path to building saunas here started with a woodshed. During her first full Maine winter, she and a group of friends, many of them off-grid homesteaders, renovated a shed on a friend’s property into a sauna. Every Sunday from September through April, for three years, they’d gather to sweat and potluck. For the ones living without running water, it was their weekly bath.

There are now two permanent wood-fired saunas on the farm. The Riverbank is set into the tree line with a panoramic window overlooking the river. The Float sits right on the water at the dock. Between rounds, you climb down into submerged oyster cages for your cold plunge, deep wire mesh bathtubs that also keep you safe from the tidal currents. After, you shuck fresh oysters steps from where they were grown.

75-minute sessions for up to 4 people. $125 for the Riverbank, $155 for the Float. Priced per session, not per person. Open fall, winter, and spring.

📷 @gliddenpoint @cedargrovesauna taken in Glidden Point by @etsauna

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7 months ago

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7 months ago

Tucked into a quiet Tenderloin side street, Onsen SF feels like stepping into another world.

It originally opened in 2016 after founders Sonny Simmons and Caroline Smith spent three years converting a former auto body shop into a bathhouse inspired by their time in Japan. They preserved exposed brick and heavy beams, added skylights and redwood, and even converted the mechanic’s pit into a soaking pool.

After closing during the pandemic, the space sat dark for five years until former general manager Adam Wren stepped in to bring it back to life.

From the beginning, Onsen was designed as a place to bathe, eat, and linger. A redwood sauna, steam room, soaking tub, and cold shower sit within a minimalist bathhouse that feels closer to a neighborhood sentō than a destination spa. A full restaurant operates alongside the baths, making it one of the few places in the United States where a proper meal is part of the ritual.

Sessions are $50 for two hours, or $120 to include a multi-course meal afterward.

📷 @onsen.sf @thetvsh @raquelvenanciomarins taken in Tenderloin, SF, CA by @etsauna

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7 months ago

A 70-person Finnish sauna built beneath the Williamsburg Bridge.

Attercop was the centerpiece sauna of NYC’s Culture of Bathing sauna village at Domino Park in Brooklyn.

The winter sauna village brought more than a dozen saunas to Domino Park earlier this year. The festival has now wrapped, but for a few weeks Brooklyn hosted the most ambitious public sauna installation ever seen in the United States.

Designed by Sami Rintala and @dagureggertsson of @rintalaeggertsson, the sauna features stadium-style benches facing a massive wood-fired stove and floor-to-ceiling views of the Manhattan skyline.

The custom stove was built in Finland by @juupfinland specifically for this sauna.

The project was created for @cultureofbatheing with @thermegroup and built by a large international crew of architects, engineers, and carpenters who assembled the structure on the Brooklyn waterfront.

📸 @rintalaeggertsson / @juupfinland / @superiorsaunas taken in Domino Park Williamsburg by @etsauna

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7 months ago

@anordicspa is Alaska’s first Nordic spa, and it’s absolutely massive.

A 50,000 sq ft indoor-outdoor facility tucked into the Chugach Mountains at Alyeska Resort in Girdwood is a 45-minute scenic drive from Anchorage.

The circuit includes Finnish sauna, Halotherapy sauna, two Banya saunas, two barrel saunas, aromatherapy steam rooms, hot and warm hydrotherapy pools, a cold plunge waterfall, and an exfoliation cabin with Alaskan sea salt.

Heat up, cool down under the waterfall, then warm back up in a cedar soaking tub surrounded by snow-covered evergreens. When you’re done, refuel at the on-site Two Trees Bistro without ever leaving the spa.

Open daily 10am-9pm, $145 for a full day hydrotherapy session. Reservations required. 18+.

📷 @anordicspa taken in Girdwood, Alaska by @etsauna

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7 months ago

@vonsauna — the one that started it all (for me anyway)

Washington State’s first public floating sauna. It opened in March 2024, inspired by founder David Jones’ trip to the floating saunas of Oslo in 2020.

Today there are two saunas floating at Carillon Point in Kirkland. Heat up inside, then jump off the ladder for a cold plunge straight into the frigid waters of Lake Washington.

Open 7 days a week, $32 for mid week sessions, $40 on the weekend and with occasional, guided meditations, Aufguss & Banya nights, Von is well worth a visit!

📷 @erikajschultz / @seattletimes taken in Carillon Point by @etsauna

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7 months ago