Birthday Blog

Today's blog care of E

It's winter in Zurich, there is snow on the ground, it's hovering around 0 C, so we decided that a great way to celebrate my birthday (tomorrow) would be to go swimming. So we packed up our bathing suits and water wings and headed to Bernaqua, a pool/water park/spa.

The cold air and hot water make for a dense fog

Giant faucets give great shoulder massages

Our first stop after arriving and changing was one of the two outdoor pools (you enter the water indoors and swim through a down out into the snow. With the air at 0 C and the water at 33 C (and the occasional snowfall) it was surprisingly comfortable -- though we skipped jumping out to go run through the snow as others were doing. I've done my polar bear swim and this was MUCH preferable.  The pool had several different attractions.  There were chaise lounges with small holes in them that water bubbled up through.  L particularly loved this as the water pushed her right up to the surface to her excited "Wheees!" and "Oooohs!"  There was a wall with jets of water coming out and up to give a great massage, as well as what looked like giant faucets that gave great shoulder massages.  Even a waterfall (to swim under, not go over).  

Rapids were just that

After trying out everything outside we decided to check out the slides inside. First off was the wild rapids, which felt true to the name -- as if you accidentally fell into a category 4 river, complete with a whirlpool that was nearly impossible to escape and quick turns and drops that made it difficult to know when to take a breath.  It was fun but a little too extreme (for me anyway, R went a couple more times). So we next went to the family raft ride which was definitely more my speed. After first checking it out with S, we decided that T should also try it and he LOVED it.  We rode in a two person inner tube, with me in back and T in the front, holding onto my legs, and went down what felt like a pretty steep slalom course. About half way down Thor yelled "This is fun!  Again!"  So we did, a few more times with me and then a few times with A.  

We didn't just leave L sitting on the sidelines this whole time though. There was a kid's area with some small slides various objects shooting water.  There was also a big bowl (perfectly sited for L) with a bucket above it that occasionally dropped about 20 gallons of water in a giant splash.  I was pretty sure she would hate it, but after watching a couple of older kids get splashed L ran over and climbed in herself and (with the help of S's goggles) loved having a huge bucket of water dumped all over her.

The KinderPark was perfect for L, who loves going down slides (again and again and again)

There were lots of other pools, but we had a few favorites. First was probably the movie room, where heavily salted water (about 4%) made it super easy to float, and purple light from below the water combined with darkness and a giant (bigger than movie theater sized) screen playing nature videos. Both L & T really floated well in there, with T getting practice on his swimming and L looking like a baby manatee bobbing vertically in the water.  She loved it.  Another highlight was the wipeout course.  In case you aren't familiar with it, wipeout is a TV show where contestants have to work through a big obstacle course which usually results in them falling in muddy water (over and over again). Well, no mud here, but a course made of a series of floats tied together so you can, in theory, jump from one to the other to make it across the pool was otherwise very reminiscent. As R pointed out, the course always looks so easy that you wonder why people are so terrible that they can't run across.  Well, it isn't as easy as it looked.  R & S tried first and only made it about 1/4 of the way across. S later convinced me to try too, and I didn't even make it that far. It is surprising how hard it is to stay balanced while trying to move forward on slippery, bobbing floats. It did make for some amusing falls and flips into the water though (I even got some applause).

There were also a couple of really fun water slides, "black hole," which reminded me of an old sci fi effect with light streaming by as you dipped and slid through darkness, and "emotion ride," which had lots of changes in slope to change your speed, combined with changing colored lights and a heavy mist occasionally interrupted by rainfall.  

Black Hole (in reality much darker than the picture)

Riding through the mists of Emotion

We ended the day back in the outdoor pool we started in, checking out a section we hadn't gone in before. There were two parallel straight lengths, connected by semicircles at each end and we weren't quite sure what they were for until suddenly L went zipping away from us. "Whee!"  It was a lazy river, but the fastest I've ever been in by far, with a couple of huge kicks on both sides and as you round the corners at either end.  T quickly figured out how to do this on his own and enjoyed swimming faster than he ever has by far. A & I set up about 20 feet apart and let L shoot from one of us to the other, laughing all the way. When the water shut off about 20 minutes later we decided that was a sign for us to leave.

In addition to the Bernaqua we also decided to celebrate my birthday with an early Thanksgiving. Since that kicks off our Christmas season we decided we didn't need to be tied to the real, late date this year and instead had our stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, sugared carrots, cous cous salad and chicken (couldn't find turkey) today, in time for the big Christmas parade downtown tomorrow.

We ended the night celebrating 50 years of Dr Who, with a fun episode broadcast simultaneously in 70 countries around the world.