Baden-Baden Day 2

We had to get up early, because our great parking spot was only free on Friday.  Saturday was a normal paying day, and the pay period starts at 8 a.m.  We paid for two hours of parking, which is just enough time to have our breakfast, and check out of the hotel, and head off to the Caracalla Therme.

First though, was breakfast.  Have you ever had a European continental breakfast?  It's nothing like in America where you have muffins, donuts, some places waffles, eggs or cereal.  Sure there was yogurt and granola, which was delicious, but there was also ham, salami, rolls, tomatoes, salmon, cucumbers, pickles, and I know there was a bunch of other stuff that reminded me of a salad bar.  It was good food, just unusual for breakfast.  We had our fill, checked out and went off to the baths.

Caracalla is a HUGE building.  They have underground parking, and that will take you right into the spa.  We didn't realize that we needed to bring our own towels, so we had to rent them.  We thought for just a minute that maybe we'd buy some towels, and call them our souvenirs, but at 45 Euro a towel (roughly $60) we felt that was too extreme, so we settled on renting.  You can choose the amount of time you want to stay.  Our hotel had a special pass card that gave us one hour free, if we paid for two hours, so we opted for a 3 hour stay, but because Tim had scheduled a twin massage, that gave us another hour.  After that is sorted, they give you these wristbands that are like watches.  Once you are in the baths, you use that to *charge* stuff you didn't pay for in advance.  Caracalla is open for ages 7yrs and up, and it's a swimsuit bath house.  There is a lot to it, let me try and explain.

This is the main area.  It's a huge swimming pool like pool.  It's large and circular.  The main pool is heated like a regular swimming pool, though you don't use it to swim in.  It's about waist deep.  Along the sides of the pool are ledges used for sitting.  In the middle there are two more circular pools, raised above the rest.  Each of them are warmer than the pool.  Not quite hot tub warm, but warmer.  They also have some pipes on the sides that raise up out of the pool, and have a triangular head, they spray water.  If you stand under them, it's like a water massage along your neck.

Off to the sides they have an Aroma sauna, that is extremely hot, with, of course, aromas.  It smelled good at first, but I had to leave quickly because the aroma became a bit too much.  There's a salt sauna, where you breathe in salted steam, it's supposed to be really good for your health.  There's also the massage place, where we went for our twin massage.  Which was absolutely wonderful.

My favorite part of the inner area was the waterfall hot tub.  It was off to the side, and it was a large pool in a circular shape.  In a small part of that area was a smaller pool of cold water.  The idea is, you go in the cold water and dunk down, then quickly go to the other side, where the water is hot tub hot, and rush in.  It gives quite a tingling sensation.  (kind of like in Utah, when we'd roll in the snow, then jump into the hot tub). This area was huge, with a waterfall. It could fit at least 30 people comfortably.

Images from here

Outside there were two more pools.  Both were the same temperature as the indoor pool, and both had a mini hot tub inside the pool.  In one of them, they had what is best described as a stone bed.  It was kind of like an ergonomic chair, inside the pool.  You would go and lay on it, and the water should cover you up to your neck ( my short stature made this one difficult to do) and then bubbles would come up around your body.    In the other pool, there was a strong current that would float you around and around.  We did that but the current pulled me into a wall, where the tiles ended up scratching up my elbow, thus ended my joy of their lazy river.  

Inside there was also a cafe, where we ate a small lunch (charged to our wristbands, of course) and went back to enjoying the baths.

They also had a section with lounge chairs, above them were a bunch of sunning lamps.  You turned them on, and relaxed.  We were there, people watching, when I noticed a woman in what I would call a skimpy bikini.  Most people were pretty covered up there, I was actually surprised by the amount of one piece swimsuits, so I was utterly shocked when the woman turned to talk to the information booth guy, and she was wearing a g-string.  Seriously.  I mean sure, we're in Europe, but EVERYONE was covered, and even the two piece suits were more covering than this was.  We were even MORE shocked, when we realized that it was the same couple from the restaurant the night before.  They waved at us, then went upstairs.  We didn't go upstairs, because upstairs is wear the naked saunas are, and we didn't want to go to the naked saunas.

When it was finally time to go, we changed, and returned our towels for a refund of the security deposit.  We also had to put our wristbands in a machine to see all the extra charges, and then pay.  If you don't pay, then the turnstile won't let you out.  It was an interesting system.

 It was such a wonderful 4 hours, and of course it was over all too quickly.  We did some window shopping, and I bought some lovely lacey scarves.  We went back to the ice cream shop, but this time we got some Gelato.  I got watermelon and strawberry....

Tim got Oreo, and snickers.  All of them were good, though the watermelon was extremely sweet, almost too sweet.

After our treat, we figured it was about time to head home and pick up our kids.  We stretched it out and ate dinner at an Italian joint by our house.  It was a great way to celebrate, and I know we'll make it back there before we move.