Zakopane Aqua Park

A ski vacation would be nothing without a visit to hot pools and saunas! This time we visited the Zakopane Aqua Park in Poland. And obviously in the mountain town of Zakopane.

I did not know what to expect, really. This was a big facility that we had passed by on our travels. It is right in the center of Zakopane, and there's surprisingly small number of spas in the city itself -- though more if you're willing to travel half an hour or an hour out.

It turned out to be an inexpensive community swimming pool merged with hot springs and saunas and few other extras. The main attraction for us were the outdoor hot pools -- one very large one at 33 degrees, and a smaller at 36 degrees (Celsius). They were not crowded, and they were just right in the -5 degrees weather and the darkness of the evening. Wonderful!

Another potential attraction would have been the saunas, but we run out of time to visit them, and it would have been a small hassle to enter as well -- the all-you-can-use tickets were sold out, so we'd have had to pay extra, I guess with our bracelets. And go back to the dressing rooms to get towels that weren't provided by the house. Anyway, I'm sure it would have been great saunas! Maybe next time.

The main drawback on our visit (January 5 evening) was that the facility was quite crowded. I also like the Finnish swimming pool style where your dressing rooms and lockers are in one place, gender-separated, and it is easy to undress and put your stuff away. In many other places you have a joint area for lockers and different small cabins for changing clothes. This results in a need to transport your clothing and other belongings around the facility. Perhaps I could get used to it, but at least this time it felt a bit like extra effort, along with figuring out how these particular lockers worked, what the ticket variants were, etc.

For more sauna and swimming stories, check out planetswimmer.com and saunablogger.cool websites! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2023 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. I never take photos of other saunagoers or swimmers and visit when there is simply no one else or the facility has been closed or booked only for me.