Disassembled in Europe and rebuilt north of San Diego, Cal-a-Vie blends 17th-century châteaux vibes with serious fitness and farm-to-fork cuisine.
When most men hear “spa vacation,” a certain image comes to mind: Cucumber slices over your eyes. Rabbit-friendly portions of food that leave you fantasizing about the pub burger down the road. Being wrapped in seaweed to the sound of whale calls. I was skeptical, too. Then I spent three nights at Cal-a-Vie Health Spa in Vista, California, just north of San Diego, with my wife for our anniversary. I’m not sure who had a better time. All I know is that they practically had to pry the room key to our château away from my newly manicured hands.
How Provence Came to California
The experience begins before you even check in. Pull off the freeway and within minutes you’re winding through rolling hill wine country. You come to an unassuming private gate, cross an antique wooden bridge, and suddenly you’re in Provence. The laid-back Southern California vibe is still there, but the French countryside has somehow been airlifted in and set down on top of it. Which, it turns out, is literally what happened. Owners Terri and John Havens are admitted Francophiles. But they didn’t hang some Toulouse-Lautrec prints, pipe in Édith Piaf songs and say voilà!
They went to France and brought large pieces of it back with them. Three actual 17th and 18th century structures were physically dismantled, shipped across the Atlantic, and reassembled on this California hillside: a 1615 chapel from a Carmelite convent in Dijon, an orangerie from the same convent, a 1715 parish house from Burgundy, and a stone turret reimagined into a windmill. The cottages themselves are like the guest quarters of a French baron. Every nook of the property is filled with some Frenchified delight like chandeliers, furniture, tapestries, candelabras, and wine. Lots of estate-grown wine. Which doesn’t seem very spa-like, but that’s sort of my point.
There’s Yoga, Pickleball and Golf
Each evening before dinner, guests gather in the elegant Garden Room to receive their personalized schedule for the following day. Cal-a-Vie has been called “a summer camp for grown-ups” and that’s what this feels like: a bunch of strangers clutching their itineraries and giggling with anticipation. By checkout, they’ll be besties.
My wife immediately circled trapeze yoga and sound bath meditation. I went straight for pickleball, interval weight training, and the hip-strengthening class, all before lunch. There are over 160 fitness classes offered and 10 miles of hiking trails across 500 private acres. If that isn’t your thing, there are two pools, including a massive Olympic-length one that completely did me in after one lap. There are also clay tennis courts in a nod to the French Open and access to an 18-hole golf course at the adjoining Havens Country Club. I learned more about pickleball in one lesson with tennis pro Kris Kluis than I have in two years trying to master this new hobby of mine. A Minnesota native, Kluis has taught at Cal-a-Vie for more than two decades, and he even coached the Havens’ children. He also keeps an ’80s soundtrack pumping the whole time, so you can learn to dink to Duran Duran.
Farm-To-Fork Dining
Let’s talk about the food for a minute, because that was my biggest concern going in. I knew it would be healthy, but that can also mean tasteless and skimpy. Not the case at Cal-a-Vie. I was downright stuffed after each meal. Executive Chef Felipe Gonzalez Varon focuses on locally sourced ingredients from the property’s own 10-acre organic farm and wild-caught seafood. We had BBQ pizza, filet mignon, and fresh wild-caught fish — all of it nutritionist-approved. During our stay, guest chef Sheri-Lynn DeMaris — founder of Macro Magic — led a cooking demonstration that taught us how to make miso soup and introduced us to the nutritional wonders of daikon. And in case you worried about getting hungry between meals, there was a smoothie break every morning, a nutrition break mid-afternoon, and hors d’oeuvres in the Garden Room before dinner. Breakfast also included a specially-baked muffin of the day, which I greatly appreciated.
Luxe Spa Treatments
No spa would be worth its salt bath without its treatments, and Cal-a-Vie offers quite a menu, including massages, scrubs, wraps, vinotherapy using grapes from their own vineyard, and Watsu, a water-based Shiatsu therapy in a private heated pool. I went with a traditional Swedish massage and something called Legs Rejuvenated & Renewed, in which a therapist uses a buffing device on your legs until they tingle like crazy and then massages in a cooling bamboo polish of organic mint, aloe vera, and arnica that helps with your circulation and lymphatic drainage. It was an interesting experience bringing my legs to the car wash. Not sure I’d do it again. For the record, my wife raved about the facial.
A Seriously Romantic Getaway
After a day of pickleball and power lifting, the property transforms into one of the most romantic places I have ever been. One night we journeyed up to the 1615 chapel for a silent candlelit meditation. Another night we walked the candlelit labyrinth — an ancient meditative practice where the winding path inward represents releasing what weighs on you. It all sounds a bit woo-woo, but it was so beautiful I just got swept up in the moment. My favorite night was wine tasting around a gigantic firepit fit for a Targaryen feast. For stargazers, there’s an observatory on the property run by an astronomer, equipped with a state-of-the-art Takahashi telescope. The seats were salvaged from the original Houston Astrodome — another antique collection of the Havens.
Cal-a-Vie offers three, four, and seven-night packages. The California 3-night package starts at $5,565 plus tax for a spa villa room, which includes accommodations, all meals, unlimited fitness classes, four complimentary spa treatments, evening programming, and airport transfers. It is not cheap. It is also completely worth every franc.
