Taking it easy at the chalet and the pool

After two days of driving to look at beautiful sights, we stayed a bit closer to home today and took it easy. We slept in, had a leisurely breakfast. The kids played while I worked on my blog.

Eventually, we made a plan. Karin pointed out that about 45 minutes up the road is a healing herb garden that is open to the public only on Wednesdays. Totally Cristina's cup of tea. But I knew if we all went, the kids would be whining to leave much sooner than she'd like, and I too would probably be on the kids' side. I recommended she and Karin go and the rest of us stay at the chalet. Stefan suggested we could take the kids down to the public pool. It was the perfect day for it. Hot and sunny.

The name of the pool, which is really much more than just a pool, is Wallbach Bad, which means "the pool at the creek of Wall." It included a large (Olympic) unheated pool, a smaller outdoor heated pool with Jacuzzi lounges, an indoor unheated pool with diving boards, an indoor kiddie pool, a water slide, a sauna, and maybe some other things that we didn't see. 

One interesting thing I noticed was they had one locker room for everyone, men and women. When you pay for admission, they give you a card, like a credit card. Then you scan it to go through a turnstile. Next step is the locker room, where everyone first leaves their shoes in one central location. Then you find a locker. You put your card in a slot in the inside of the locker to release the key, which you can wear on your wrist. Pretty smart. And there are private changing booths throughout the locker room, so there was really no need to have separate men and women's locker rooms.

After you change clothes and lock up your stuff, men and women separate to go into the shower rooms. Showering is required. And then you emerge into the pool complex. They have little pools of water at the door that goes from outside to inside, which helps keep feet cleaned off and grass out of the pools.

 So sunny. We definitely would have burned if we hadn't used sunscreen, swim shirts, and a healthy dose of the indoor pool. Heinz got sunburned, but we thankfully did not.

 Sofia could not get any speed on the water slide. Here she just bumped her head standing up.

 This big floatie thing was anchored in the big pool. Even though the water was cold, Alex and Bella spent most of their time here.

 I preferred the heated pool, which had these nice Jacuzzi seats for extra relaxation.

Back at home, it was our night to cook dinner. We had planned a Costa Rican type dinner of rice, black beans, tortillas, avocado, salsa, etc. But as I said in a previous post, we had trouble finding some of the ingredients. Black beans, in particular, were nowhere to be found. So we improvised with a mixture of red kidney beans, lentils, and borlotti beans. We made the salsa from scratch (probably more of a pico de gallo than what Americans think of as salsa) with onions, red pepper, tomatoes, garlic, and vinegar. We forgot to buy cilantro, so to give it a little bit of green, we added diced cucumber. It all came out great and everyone got full. Heinz and Olivia seemed to enjoy it too.