Imagine this:

I had the worst day ever. No exaggeration, the worst day in years. Every emergency situation possible exploded over the weekend and the fact that I needed to leave town for my best friend’s birthday weekend only added more stress. We cancelled our cabin rental on the coast and I resolved to stay in San Francisco and get some work done.

At the last minute I hopped in the car with my friends Pete and Ari for an abridged version of our original plan. Pete is a hot spring aficionado and has traveled to over 30 hot springs in a number of different countries. He proposed we drive down to Big Sur for the night and drive home afterward so I was able to work on Sunday. We set out from Oakland around 10:30pm and drove down the winding route 1. The sky was pitch black and even from the car I saw that it was a magnificent night for stars. We arrived in Big Sur at 1:30am and walked down a wooded path that smelled like Eucalyptus to the Esalen Institute. A young hippie guy met us at the desk and explained how to find the hot spring tubs and how to operate them. We set off giggling and wandered around looking for the bathhouse for about 10 minutes.

We fell silent once we found our way. The bathhouse was Japanese inspired and minimal. After you get undressed you walk onto onto the porch and pick a communal hot spring tub or individual claw foot tubs. My group lucked out and got the big pool on the edge of the cliff. All of my stress melted away as I soaked in the hot tub looking at the stars and listened to the crashing waves.

Now I’m a hot spring convert and want to check out Harbin and Yosemite next!