La Piscine....

Okay, after 2 weeks of my wife becoming the author of the year with her stellar blogging of our National Lampoon's European Vacation, I thought I would steal just one day to be the guest author of the day.  Nothing super exciting to post about today.  We knew we had to prepare for our trip to Amsterdam and it would be a quiet day overall.  Unfortunately, by noon, our 3 super well behaved charming children were driving us absolutely nuts, so I thought it would be a good idea to take the kids to the community pool and give Lady Di some peace.  The local Marly Le-Roi pool closed at 1pm, so we ventured out to the neighboring town of St. Germain En Laye, which I heard was a bigger pool with BIG diving boards.  Just finding the pool felt like a victory in and of itself as our car navigation system has a bit of a mind of its own.  After some navigational challenges, we found it!

The French have really got it right in terms of their swimming pools, they are fun filled, crazy clean (no globs of hair floating around or over-chlorination), and a place for the entire family to just chill out.  The kids got to see first hand how you first take off your shoes before entering the locker room area, then shower with warm water, walk through the foot bath moat, and finally enter into the cool Piscine.  As Jacob gave a sigh of relief to see the many swimmers also sporting fashionable Speedos, we all jumped into the huge Olympic pool.  Maddie thought the water was amazingly clean and we all noticed how the many French families played together, floated on rafts, swam laps with masks and snorkels, dove off the platform boards, and lounged in the sun on the deck lawn where you can have a fresh Crepe made for 2 Euros.  Good times today and although I would have loved to swim a few miles in the 50 Meter lap lanes pretending I am Michael Phelps defeating the French in the Olympics, I had a great time hanging with the kiddos at the pool today!