By Alison McGill
Autumn is the season to kick your selfcare up several notches. Those joyful, sunny and endless summer days now seem a distant memory; it’s darker, days are shorter, and cozy nesting season feels are abundant. Though autumn is season full of delights, it can also feel heavy. It’s a perfect season to book time for relaxation and rejuvenation. The perfect place to do it? At the Spa at Q, a chic new European-inspired destination spa in one of Ontario’s prettiest towns.
The Spa at Q is located inside 124 on Queen which is definitely not your typical Niagara-On-The-Lake (NOTL) hotel. Stepping into the space, the first thing you’re struck by is the crisp and cool vibe that’s incredibly fresh, particularly in an area renowned for its old-world, vintage vibe properties. 124 on Queen was renovated and expanded in 2022 and is now home to 72 guestrooms and suites, all of which feature a soothing and serene modern décor style.
A major focus of the 124 on Queen’s expansion was to include a wellness component and they have majorly ticked that box with the expansive Spa at Q. The 12,000 square foot space is a true destination spa with a distinctly European flavour. Aesthetically, the spa is pure luxury and total indulgence and thanks to a calming, warn neutral colour palette and marble finishes throughout. Treatment wise, the comprehensive menu offers cutting edge therapies for face and body including hyperbaric oxygen and cryo-therapy facials, and an energy balancing rose quartz crystal massage.
A must-do at the Spa at Q is the Wellness Hydrotherapy Circuit ($95 per person for $120 minutes) which incorporates the ancient spa rituals of caldarium (hot), tepidarium (warm), and frigidarium (cool). On this self-guided sensory experience, you begin with dip in the hot plunge pool, followed by a multi-sensory shower treatment which cycles through four types of water pressure infused with light and aromatherapy. A cedar-lined sauna session comes next—close your eyes and feel instantly transported to a magical warm woodland space. Cool down from there with a plunge in the warm pool, a sit in the eucalyptus steam room, ending with a session in the snow room. Yes, a snow room!
The Spa at Q snow room is the only one of its kind in Canada. The glassed-in space features benches set against walls wallpapered with majestic evergreen trees. Here you can sit and enjoy a light snowfall which magically tumbles from the ceiling, made via a special spa snow machine imported from Austria by the spa. The daily snow fall in the Spa at Q measures 10-15 centimetres (the weekly tally measures close 100 centimetres!), and the temperature of the room sits at about 10 degrees Celsius, but with the snow it feels more like five degrees. Cold therapy is famous for calming inflammation in the body, and this is a perfect way enjoy winter, without shivering or shovelling.
When I visited the spa, it was on the hottest July day of the year and the snow room was a most welcome respite from the sun. It was the perfect place to escape the heat and emerge thoroughly chilled for an evening of great food and good times at the hotel’s latest eatery NOTL Bar & Restaurant.
