Today we took the entire day off. Early afternoon we went swimming in the Center Parcs pool. It’s an indoor/outdoor facility capped with a dome. It has varying types of pools and water ride areas for adults and kids, surrounded by all kinds of plant life and trees like a jungle. You never have to leave the pool, and can directly swim outside.
The downside to this set-up is there were a fair amount of leaves in the water, and the pool temperature outside is noticeable if the air is cooler. The waterslide areas were small, but fun and efficient. I ended up being pulled backwards several times or hitting the bottom of the pool butt first. It was a bit crowded, but not horribly for the weekend. I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it might be to go here during regular holiday season.
The locker rooms were unusual, allowing for entire families to be in the same changing area and to enter/exit together. Next time we’re going to bring the waterproof Kodak HD camera G has, so we can film some of the water rides. The chlorine in pools always seems to stick like glue, especially in heavily used areas like this. As I was taking a shower later, my arm started stinging and hurting badly. I looked down to see a tiny fire ant clinging onto me for high heaven.
As I started shrieking like a girl, G popped into the shower and started smacking at it. Unfortunately since he was minus glasses, it took him nearly three times to get it off. It was still alive and crawling around in the tub when I ran out, allowing G to kill it. I was pretty freaked out, and earned an irritated pink area (from the bite) on my arm about six inches wide. Luckily I wasn’t allergic, but it hurt for few hours afterward. Up through the later portion of the week, the bite is still there. G did a bug check for other biting things, and only found one other ant to kill. This wasn’t bad enough to ruin my trip or even my day. I am going to have to deal with the bugs, because there’s always a few hanging around after you kill “all of them”.