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| - This was my first Canadian "zimzilbang" and compared to my US experiences, I wasn't very impressed. But if you don't have any other options nearby, it will do.
The good: One of the women's spas has a strong jet spray that, if you stand in the perfect spot, hits right on the shoulders. Awesome if you have a lot of tension there! And with some awkward maneuvering, you can probably get it to hit other parts of your body that are sore. I managed to get a few minutes on my lower back and even my calves which felt wooonderful but probably looked ridiculous.
The meh: First off, it was a little hard to find the place, and when we did, the parking lot looked a little rundown and could use some fixing up.
Second, the place is a lot smaller and more basic than the US k-spas I've visited. The women's spa room is pretty compact--when you enter, the scrub/massage room is to your left, and the showers are right in front of you. There is one spa to the left of the showers behind the scrub room, and another to the right, along with the wet sauna room. I didn't do a scrub but was surprised to see them taking customers so late in the evening.
The main room is also very bare looking--maybe because it's so large with a big space in the middle. The cafe is to the right, with a few tables/chairs, and the wall are lined with big black couches. Perhaps it was because we were there so late--if there are people/mats in the middle of the room, it probably won't look so unnecessarily immense. We didn't try the food, but it smelled pretty good.
My least favorite thing was my experience in the heated/sauna rooms. The heated area is separated from the main/cafe area, and there is a smaller "main" room with heated floors in there, with a TV in that common area. Mats and head pillows are available. The individual rooms were small but decent, but the annoying thing was that people would talk really loudly to each other. In the main room, I can tolerate this, but in the individual sauna rooms, I really felt that it was a breach of spa etiquette.
Would I recommend to a friend? If they want a Korean spa experience in the Toronto area, and this is still the only one, yes, with the disclaimer that it will be different from the US Korean spas. But I probably wouldn't go out of my way again.
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