Hah! This daily blogging thing is easy peasy. Nah nah. Who cares if the content is entirely meaningless and my total number of viewers to date is 3?
Today I discovered why people go to spas. Yesterday, I was not so convinced. We had gone to a place called Terme Čatež, 14km from the little village (Pišece) we’re staying in eastern Slovenia. Just a big swimming pool really – with a few good water slides, but nothing better than the local swimming pool at the Oasis Centre in Bedford (UK). It all felt a bit Butlins (c.1970s) or Centre Parcs (c.1990s). Not always my idea of fun – or relaxation. I would call it the wow? factor.
But the spa centre we went to today a little further afield at Olimia had the wow! factor as soon as you walked in. You immediately feel pampered, wandering from steam room, to outdoor hot pool, to indoor ice pool, to sauna, to water bed in your freshly laundered dressing gown. And despite the stylish decor (renaissance boudoir meets 70s lounge) nobody tells you what to do or how to do it. Whereas in Italy or England this would lead to instant anarchy, here in Slovenia it leads to nothing more serious than some over-zealous petting in the darker areas of the pools (everyone is naked). Only other downside (though the latter was definitely an upside if you’re a couple) is you don’t have a clue what is going on for the first hour or so. From not realising that the kiosk feature stuck in the middle of an empty lounge is actually THE changing room, to understanding too late that the hosepipe attached to the side of the stone armchair you have just placed your naked butt down on in the very steamy steam room is there for a very good reason…
But the upside is you can do all these adult behaviour kind of things that you’re not used to doing anymore, while the kids flap around mad with joy in the swimming pool, riding fast water currents, listening to music underwater, playing on pirate ships and sitting in dark caves (ignoring, you hope, the heavily petting teenagers who have not yet graduated to the hot tubs upstairs). It is only when these two worlds meet (adults blissed out from hours in the sauna, and kids hyped up from hours sliding down chutes) that you are made aware of the extraordinary different energies involved in being an adult and being a child. Which is what happened when we invited the kids to sneak in to the water bed room at a quiet point in the day when no one was looking. As I lay back and felt truly and gratefully supported by the odd firmness of the water beneath me, my youngest began a rendition of Greased Lightening (you know, standing on the waterbed, arm outstretched, following an imaginary moving car, knees bent, pelvis thrusting forward and back..). It was time to go back to the hotel (happily well removed from the complex, allowing us to practice our Everly Brothers harmonies all the way back).
Letters from Trieste 