This hotel spa is probably the closest you can get to actually being Elizabeth Taylor in your own lifetime -- Liz in the 1950s and 1960s that is, not the Fortensky years. … These are beauty treatments so ludicrously, tackily decadent that they can only have sprung from the imagination of the Cleopatra set designer: Float in a giant golden shell, bathe in milk, or be massaged with chocolate scented oils and try not to eat yourself afterwards. No complimentary diamonds, alas. [link]

Like benevolent woodland sprites, Aveda make you pretty using tinctures of birchbark, moss, nice flowers, and essential oils (well, mixed in with some high-end cosmetic … ingredients). After you've had all your body hair removed and your outer layers of skin sloughed off, they can provide the finishing touch with a facial or a cut and blow dry (prices starting at a surprisingly affordable €48). [link]

Anyone with ovaries secretly wants to eat cake all the time, but it can be difficult to know when to stop. That's where individual cupcakes come into it, plus cake forks … to slow you down. This new cafe in Friedrichshain has an ever-changing menu of dainty cakes with whipped frosting and sprinkles for blood sugar switchbacks. Also dishes up savory comfort food and root beer floats. [link]

Nothing says "I'm a big girly girl" like having all your body hair ripped out by hot wax. Wax in the City imports its depiladoras direct from Brazil and offers a full … menu of hair removal options, many of them startling to read on the printed page, let alone experience in the cold, hard light of the cubicle. Also caters to boys. [link]

Upscale food court at Berlin's biggest, smartest department store. If you have the time and the funds, you can slip from bar stool to bar stool round the 30 different … stands sampling sushi, champagne, osetra caviar, oysters on the half-shell, crêpes, and potato. Yes, they have a potato bar. This is Germany, after all. [link]

Dating from 1926, this family-run store is a time capsule from the 1950s, its windows crammed with gold-stoppered glass perfume flasks of all shapes and sizes. The … scents are unique family recipes -- some decade's old -- from an era when "signature fragrance" had nothing to do with a debutant and her bad hair extensions. [link]

Women's collective Schokofabrik ("Chocolate Factory') runs a full-on Turkish bath in Kreuzberg with a side order of salon and spa services. Ask for a massage and gommage … scrub-down with a rough mitten if you feel like having a few layers of skin flayed off for added peachiness. [link]

For dinner? Not cake. No. Go to this Italian in Mitte and order a plate of the pasta with truffle and a plate of the pasta with fig, poppy seeds, and salami with fennel. … Alternate between pungent truffle and sweet, salty fig/pig combo. Heavenly. Book in advance though -- the other day, they turned Jude Law away because they couldn't fit him in. [link]