Friday, September 5, 2008

What no showers?

In June 1929, Mr L, Bierenbroodspot opened the Sportfondsenbad ("Sports fund baths") in what used to be the East Amsterdam Gasworks. 

In that first year alone, the swimming pool pulled in 136534 visitors from all over the Netherlands. Punters paid 50c a time for a swim, including bathing suit rental. In the winter, they made an ice rink behind the building:


In 2001, we moved to Amsterdam, living in Pretoriusstraat, not 5 minutes walk down the road from the Sportfondsenbad.

Seven years later, still living in the same area, we finally made our first visit to our local pool. It has just reopened after a 5 month renovation / retiling process. It cost €3.50 for more or less unlimited time lane swimming. We pulled off 1KM in half an hour - I did the last 2 lengths at full speed front crawl, booya!

It's great to have the time to get into stuff like this which we can include in our routine now and (hopefully) maintain when we start working. The idea is that it will help us remain lean and toned and healthy. This is especially important since we've done little exercise, but a lot of eating since we got home. 

The only problem was that we couldn't find the showers... either we're being dumb, or there just aren't any.

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