The Vibe
An upscale hair salon with spa services available on the second floor.  The facility is very nice and the décor is modern with a soothing touch.  When you first walk in the door you are greeted by a comforting spa scent and a beautiful waterfall with stones and the Rikeesa logo.  It’s breathtaking and relaxing.   

Beyond this great first impression lies a loud, busy hair salon.  Adding to the noise is an alarm on the front door that beeps whenever the door is opened.  The reception desk is at the foot of the open staircase that leads to the spa area. The reception area was hectic the day we visited, filled with both salon and spa customers. 

The Little Things
We found Rikeesa to lack the little extras that separate the quality spas from the others. First, the parking lot at Rikeesa is too small to handle the customers...The check-in was loud and crowded and did not give us that relaxed, welcoming feeling we typically get when we check into a spa...We were not provided robes and slippers for our treatments, even though Rikeesa's website says that all spa customers enjoy this amenity....There were no beverages or snacks made available to us.

The Star Treatment
The Body Polish with Vichy Shower. This treatment lasted a half hour and began with a "smell test", so that I could pick the scent the most appealed to me that day. This scent was infused into the exfoliant. My esthetician, Sarah, applied the exfoliant to one body part at a time as I relaxed on the plastic table. As she scrubbed each body part, she rinsed with a hose, except when she rinsed my back. This time she turned on the Vichy Shower, a horizontal shower rod with five shower heads that massaged the length of my body. It felt fabulous and incredibly relaxing!  The treatment ended with an application of moisturizer, infused with my chosen scent, to keep the healthy skin cells soft and hydrated.

The Distinctive Element
The Vichy Shower. Not many Connecticut day spas have this equipment.

What to Keep in Mind
The duration of each treatment was not listed on the brochure...Our therapists were both running about ten minutes late...The stones used in the Hot Stone Massage were oily and left us needing a shower to rinse the residue off...we had the last appointments of the evening and many of the staff had left before we finished paying (which was still 15 minutes before close), in fact, all of the lights and the waterfall had been turned off before we exited the spa.