Lobby at the Porchester Spa

When my British friend, Marian, asked whether I would be up for trying “something completely different” during a recent visit to London, I immediately thought of the old Monty Python sketch.

What Marian, a native Londoner, had in mind didn’t involve offbeat comedy, but a visit to an off-the-beaten path attraction: the venerable Porchester Spa.

Located in the up-and-coming Bayswater neighborhood, Porchester dates to 1929 and bills itself as London’s oldest spa.

Compared to splashier hotel and resort facilities, the place is showing its age a bit. The somewhat spartan conditions, despite a 2006 renovation, may account for its mixed reviews. But I thought the absence of cushy lounge chairs, new-age music and scented candles added to its charm.

The sprawling, two-level facility features three Turkish “hot rooms,” a Finnish log sauna, two traditional steam rooms, an ice-cold plunge pool, a 30-meter swimming pool and a frigidarium or relaxation area.

The spa’s original details, including white and green tiles, Grecian-style statues, high ceilings and mahogany trim, make it easy to imagine a time when it was frequented by portly, cigar-smoking businessmen and their pampered wives.

As first-time visitors to the spa, we received a brief tour of the various treatment rooms and pools –– which are all included in the $40 admission –– and were assigned a locker and a large towel, and given clear instructions to speak quietly (and not at all in the steam areas), so as to no interfere with others’ chill-out time.

The place is co-ed on Sundays from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., when swimsuits are required, but otherwise specifies “ladies” and “gentlemen” days when clothing and even towels are optional.

Like many visitors who come in small groups, my friend and I split off to find our own bliss. Marian enjoyed a few laps in the pool, while I tested the various steam rooms. The hottest –– the calidarium –– turned out to be the “burn-your-butt-a-darium” for me. I retreated to the frigidarium for another form of British relaxation: tea and biscuits, accompanied by Hello! magazine.

We opted against individual treatments, which range from about $40 for a 30-minute massage to $78 for a full-body wrap. Traditional beauty salon services, including manicures and bikini waxing, also are available, while a “Supreme Shave,” costing $73, is available for men.

Whether you prefer to steam away your troubles or have others attend to you, the end result is likely to be the same. We left feeling decidedly more relaxed and ready for a long afternoon nap.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono's second "bed-in" at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth in Montreal; courtesy of hotel

Most hotel rooms are a blank slate, no more than a (hopefully) comfortable place to temporarily lay your head. A select few, however, are branded with pop culture everywhere you turn. Stamped with the legacies of previous guests, these rooms will be forever immortalized in books and “E! True Hollywood Story’’ episodes.

These rooms generally gain their notoriety as stages for politicians and celebrities behaving badly. While they have been the backdrops for drug overdoses, murders, and sex scandals, they have also inspired flashes of artistic genius. For a break from the ordinary, check into one of these famous –– and infamous –– rooms.

Presidential Suite, Hotel Adlon Kempinski, Berlin It was the celebrity moment that made everybody –– not just parents and child safety advocates –– cringe. In 2002, greeting his cheering fans below, Michael Jackson dangled infant son Prince Michael II (“Blanket’’), his head covered with a towel, over the balcony railing of this hotel room.

The king of pop later explained he was “caught up in the excitement of the moment.’’ The hotel’s website features a virtual tour of the suite, including the view from the window toward the Brandenburg Gate and down to the sidewalk. Even online, it’s dizzying.

Room 1220, Westin St. Francis, San Francisco Long before TMZ and Gawker, this hotel room was at the epicenter of one of Hollywood’s most salacious scandals. In 1921 silent film star Roscoe “Fatty’’ Arbuckle hosted a wild party in the sitting room of his top-floor suite. The actor was accused of raping actress Virginia Rappe in an adjacent room, and when Rappe died four days later, Arbuckle was charged with her murder.

After three highly publicized trials, he was acquitted, but his career was ruined. In another brush with fame, Al Jolson died of a heart attack after playing gin rummy in this room in 1950.

Monet Suite at The Savoy in London; courtesy of hotel

Room 618, The Savoy, London Fascinated by the interplay of sunlight and London’s pea-soup smog, French impressionist Claude Monet on three occasions at the turn of the 20th century checked into the famed Savoy, unfolded his easel, and painted the Houses of Parliament, Waterloo Bridge and other city landmarks through the grimy haze.

During the recent renovation of The Savoy, two of the sixth-floor rooms from which he painted were remodeled into the one-bedroom Monet Suite. The artist’s views of London brighten the walls, and windows open to a dazzling, smog-free view of the Thames and London Eye. Monet, however, would find no inspiration today from the clear skies. “London would be quite ugly if it was not for the fog,’’ he once wrote.

Room 118, Cadogan Hotel, London Irish playwright and poet Oscar Wilde was arrested in this Knightsbridge hotel room in 1895 on the charge of “gross indecency.’’ His crime? A homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. John Betjeman’s poem “The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel’’ should be required reading for anyone checking into the Oscar Wilde Suite today.

Wilde’s fans can also cross the English Channel and stay in Room 16 of L’Hotel in Paris where the bedridden writer uttered, “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.’’ On Nov. 30, 1900, the wallpaper emerged victorious.

The John Lennon and Yoko Ono Suite today; courtesy of the hotel

Room 1742, Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth, Montreal Spending a week in a hotel bed might sound blissfully relaxing, but it was pure bedlam when John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their second bed-in for peace here in 1969.

Fans, celebrities, and as many as 150 journalists a day crashed the couple’s pad. Asked by one reporter what they were trying to achieve, Lennon replied: “All we are saying is give peace a chance.’’

A peace anthem was instantly born, and on June 1, 1969, the pair –– with vocal help from Timothy Leary and Tom Smothers among others –– recorded “Give Peace a Chance’’ in what today is the John Lennon and Yoko Ono Suite.

For a trans-Atlantic two-fer, stay at the John and Yoko Suite at the Amsterdam Hilton, where the pair held their first bed-in during their March, 1969, honeymoon.

Room 871, Mayflower Renaissance, Washington, D.C. While the luxury Mayflower commemorates Room 776, where Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote his famous inaugural speech in 1933, and Room 570, where the G.I. Bill was drafted on hotel stationery, it understandably does not boast of the political history that occurred in this room.

On the eve of Valentine’s Day in 2008, George Fox (a.k.a. New York Governor Eliot Spitzer) booked this room for a tryst with a $1,000-an-hour call girl. A little more than a month later when Spitzer was identified as “Client 9’’ in a high-end prostitution ring, the revelation drove him out of office.

Photo courtesy of de Young Museum

Wondering what to pack for your travels this summer?

Don’t sweat it — you’ll never be able to compete with the wonderful garments (some gorgeous, some outlandish) now on display at museums around the world, anyway.

A rash of single-designer shows are being staged, offering enticing exhibits on everyone from fierce originals (St. Laurent, McQueen) to avant garde visionaries (Gaultier, Yamamoto) to consummate traditionalists (Balenciaga, Gres). So, go look, and then look some more — but don’t touch.

Balenciaga and Spain, de Young Museum, San Francisco. Through July 4.

From the black lace of a mantilla to the red of a matador’s cape, this imaginative exhibit examines how Spanish culture and history influenced the sumptuous gowns of Cristobal Balenciaga. Besides religion and bullfighting, the show also looks at Spanish dance, art, court life and peasantry.

Yohji Yamamoto, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Through July 10

Incorporating the Japanese designer’s deconstructed creations into site specific installations throughout the museum, this exhibit is as resolutely architectural, as modest and arrogant — to use Yamamoto’s phrase — as the work itself. In a nod to the premium that the designer placed on fabric, mannequins are placed so that museumgoers can walk around and between them, to get up close to the Kyoto textiles.

Saint Laurent rive gauche, Fondation Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent, Paris. Through July 17.

Displayed in a recreation of YSL’s first Paris boutique, the 70 ensembles presented here come from the designer’s pret a porter label, which he created in 1966, five years after founding his haute couture house. The line sportily borrowed from menswear, freeing up women’s clothes in a way that hadn’t been done much before.

Madame Gres: Couture at Work, Musee Bourdelle, Paris. Through July 24.

The first retrospective in Paris for the designer known for her sculptural approach to fashion, the show offers 80 gowns on loan from the Galliera Museum and private collectors. In her best work, Madame Gres, born Germaine Krebs, brought simplicity to new heights with her elegant, draped gowns in muted shades of ivory or gray.

photo courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC. Through Aug. 7.

Although the Alexander McQueen label supplied the gown for the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the house built its reputation on edgier, statement designs invoking political and historical themes. The exhibition highlights six McQueen collections; accessories by the late British designer’s partners, including milliner Philip Treacy and jewelry designer Shaun Leane; and extensive video. A highlight is the famous hologram of model Kate Moss from a 2006 runway show.

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal. Through Oct. 2.

The lengthy title of this career retrospective seems apt, given the frenetic quality of this French designer’s work. The show is organized under tantalizing categories, such as The Boudoir, Punk Cancan and Urban Jungle, and offers up a trove of video, as well as fashion and art photography by the likes of Andy Warhol, Richard Avedon, Cindy Sherman and Herb Ritts.

La Soiree...

This review originally appeared in the Smith travel blog.

Bring out the bunting, get your best party frock on and celebrate –– La Soirée has returned through Jan. 30. What do you mean it’s never been here before? It has: You’ll know it from its old name of La Clique.

It’s now La Soirée, which to be honest is almost the exact same thing as La Clique. Think of it as a cherry-picked ‘best of’ La Clique, as that’s exactly what it is. The best of the acts, the best atmosphere, the best show in town.

After years of wowing crowds at the London Hippodrome and the Roundhouse, the stars of La Clique have returned to their own pop-up venue, the beautiful South Bank Big Top just behind the National Theatre, to bring us the decadent brilliance that is La Soirée.

Inside the intimate, cozy mirrored Big Top is a sumptuous world where the freaks come out to play, and amazement bewitches your every gaze. You’re transported to a bygone era: ornate wood, lashings of velvet, bright mirrors, stained glass and large bars push you deep into the world of La Soirée before the lights go down and the show begins… and what a show it is.

With a rotating cast of old favorites and new gems, the two-hour show zooms past as a bath boy strips off and swing around on ropes above a tub, two English Gents show the sort of strength the British banking system would kill for, Captain Frodo disgusts and delights as he contorts his body through a 10-inch tennis-racket frame and Marawa sticks on her sparkly heels and does things with hula hoops that shouldn’t be possible.

If you’ve seen the show before, you’ll know what to expect, yet one of the joys of La Soirée is that it simply doesn’t matter: These acts stand up to repeat viewing, and you’ll never know quite who you’re going to see.

True –– it can get a bit samey, after watching some impressive balancing on the top of a stack of chairs, we then watch something similar on a stack of cans.

An odd magical clowning act really didn’t make sense, or hit the high standards La Soirée has set for itself, but with these are minor flaws.

The show is pure entertainment from start to finish, and as the champagne flows and the acts continue, you find your jaw will continue to drop at this the most exhilarating night out in London.