Summer Season Kick-Off - Pool Opening & Tapas

Summers without a pool

When we first moved to Spain some years ago, we ended up at several places with a pool. Of which one was a hotel where we could work for two weeks and dip in the pool after working hours, the other one was our final host who had a pool before we all moved to another home. We felt this was such a luxury, we could not even imagine that this is part of normal life here in Spain. In Holland it's not that common to have a pool (unless it's inflatable and for a short period in summer only) and for us it was a reality check that this is more common here.

We moved to our own apartment where we didn't have an AC, and surely no pool either. We rented very cheap which was most important. But upon moving to Budapest we decided if we ever move back there, an AC is must. Thankfully, that has worked out. Sadly, we didn't have a pool in our first home back in Spain. Well, officially we had a community pool but it had been empty for years when a new owner bought the building. They said it could take at least 3 more years for it to re-open.

Upgraded apartment including pool!

Then we had the opportunity to move to this upgraded apartment including a (quite big) community pool. It was in November when we moved here and typically all these pools open somewhere in June until September, it depends on the community when they exactly open. For weeks we've been looking down our balcony and watching our neighbours across the street swimming in their little pool. That pool has been kept clean all through winter, as well as the surrounding pools, except for ours. This one turned green not long after we moved here.

Our landlady told me no worries, every year they start cleaning it in May and it opens the week before school closes. The emptying the pool and then cleaning it took forever, and then they did maintenance as well, for days I watched them make our pool turn partially white, then dry and repeat the next day. Four people have been working on it for weeks now. I thought they'd never finish!

Filling the pool

Then one evening earlier this week, I witnessed them filling the pool and leaving the hose in over night, it took the rest of the next day for it to be filled if I remember correctly. But the pump was not turned on yet, which worried me a bit because I figured that the water may turn green before today. I was right, after days of looking at a blue pool, Friday it turned green! Oh no! On Saturday morning, I saw the lifeguard arrive half an hour before it would open, I thought that's good!

Then a guy came to check the water quality and a heated discussion started between him, the gardener (who had been taking care of the cleaning and water etc) and I think the representative of the community. Arms were waved left and right, I heard him say lower and higher and repeating it to him. This made me think that he didn't properly treat the water yet and he gave him instructions to do better. I feared the opening was not going to happen.

Luck was on our side

The pool opened as planned and I took my daughter for a quick swim yesterday to test the waters! I thought the pool would be so cold but it was heated up well enough, and very enjoyable actually. On Sunday we all dipped in the pool for about 1,5 hours and it was so nice that even my boyfriend said, damn this is good! We all enjoy the fact that we go down with the elevator, jump in the pool and then when we're done, just go back up and shower instead of having all the sand and stones in our shoes from the beach. How luxury! Our pool is really big so it probably never gets really crowded.

The pool to ourselves!

Back to Friday

Friday we were supposed to drop off a package in a drop off point and then go for groceries for dinner. Then my boyfriend reminded me of that poster we passed with an outlet happening right now. I forgot about it and he said let's check it out. We drove there, didn't enter because it looked like a fancied Chinese store but with branded clothes and the prices weren't that spectacular to justify going in while being on a tight budget for a while. But we learned about this beautiful part of the city we never saw yet and went for a walk through the park in the direction of the water.

Thirsty!

I forgot to take my water from home, which I would normally not do, even when feeling healthy, Spain is not the place to leave home, drive on highways and then not have water in the car. It's best to always take some in case you end up with car trouble, the heat can be unbearable.

We saw a few tapas places and as it was 8 PM, we were right in time for tapas as well. I was there for the water though, haha. And to just have a seat and enjoy the scenery, which was very relaxing!

So the tapas we had was meat with tomato sauce (carne con tomate) and a kebab taco. The taco was ok, nothing special but it stilled the hunger, although the tomato one didn't do my boyfriend any good. Glad we kept it at one each only and drove back home.

Swimming challenge

Now that our pool is open, I'm going to try to swim every day, with and without the little one so I can exercise without adding more discomfort to my issues that I'm facing currently. Last week has been really bad, hence my low level of anything on Hive. I barely got through the days and this weekend was a good distraction from all of it.

Anyway, looking back on a nice weekend, sadly it's over again and tomorrow the final week of school starts. Five more days and then 12 whole weeks of no school. It will be a challenge for me mostly to keep our daughter busy if the health stuff won't get better soon.

Hope your weekend was enjoyable as well!

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All pictures above are my own!