My idea of wellness is hot water, saunas, steam baths and lazy days. You won’t find anything about food or medicine around here but plenty of spas.
On the Friday I was walking around Karlovy Vary, marvelling at the mineral springs, which unlike at its sibling towns on the West Bohemian Spa Triangle, are hot here. Marvelling and also wondering Where’s the pool fed by this water? In Iceland, if so much as a dribble of hot water springs out of the … More Saunia has the no 1 best pool on the entire West Bohemian Spa Triangle
On Friday afternoon I arrived at Karlovy Vary, the third spa town on my little train adventure round Czechia’s West Bohemian Spa Triangle. Karlovy Vary, or Karlsbad in German, is the biggest and best-known of the three towns, meriting an entire chapter in my guidebook instead of a mere “and this place exists too” like … More Karlovy Vary: a shock to the senses
One thing I expected when I started researching my West Bohemian Spa Towns trip was that every town would have some kind of central bathing experience, probably using the famed spa water and what I found instead was hundreds of small-to-medium hotels offering a list of medical treatments that would put most hospitals in the … More Aquaforum: Františkovy Lázně’s big central water experience
I’m writing this on the platform of the Františkovy Lázně-Aquaforum station, waiting for the tiny shuttle train to take me to neighbouring Cheb, whence I will travel to Karlovy Vary. It’s partly to keep me busy while I wait and partly because I want to get started while it’s fresh in my mind. It looks … More “Sedate” Františkovy Lázně feels like an open-air hospital
After you’ve sampled all Mariánské Lázně’s natural health-giving spring waters, you have to soak in the stuff and, quite frankly, there’s only one place in town to do that. Well, lots of the spa hotels have pools and some may even have mineral pools (which might only be available on prescription because spa in Czechia … More Taking a Roman bath in Mariánské Lázně
I’ve just got back from a week discovering Czechia’s contribution to the UNESCO list of Great European Spa Towns, which is three towns up in the top left corner known by the tourist title, the West Bohemian Spa Triangle. Even as I was on my way round, I was already excited about transforming all this … More Half a day in Mariánské Lázně
Iceland is now up to eleven lagoons, pools and geothermal experiences that are aimed at tourists, if we’re totally honest. Icelanders love hot water and the Blue Lagoon did start out as a request from the locals to bathe in the hot mineral-rich waste water from the power station but I’d bet you’ll find very … More Which lagoon should I visit in Iceland?
We all know that sauna came from Finland. I’ve tried out assorted saunas, in Finland and outside, at spas, pools and on beaches. I’ve even been to Helsinki’s big flagship public sauna. But this time, I sauna’d the way the Finns sauna, which isn’t at spas or flagship venues or even in small sheds on … More Sauna & aquajogging: what Finns actually do at the pool
Two weeks in advance, a sunrise swim in a geothermal pool floating in the Baltic seemed like a beautiful idea. The night before, while ill with something unpleasant brought home from Brownies, the idea of setting an alarm for 7am while on holiday and walking the kilometre and a half through Helsinki at somewhere around … More A sunrise swim at Allas Sea Pool at -12⁰
This is a really old adventure that’s had two or three posts over the years but deserves a new write-up and a new place at the very front of this blog rather than being buried in its bowels: the day I swam in an active volcano, got stranded for hours in a lava field and … More One really simply does not walk into Mordor: swimming in a volcano & getting stranded in a lava field
I Am A Polar Bear 