It’s been named the”World’s largest swimming pool” – and at over a kilometre long it probably is. I first heard about it on the news last week on German TV, and how there are some pictures up on the Daily Mail website.
Which leaves me to ask the question: why?
One reason I read on-line was because although this is a large resort with beautiful sandy beaches, the sea still says cold in summer because of undercurrents from the Antarctic.
Looking at the photos, there are several hotels along the length of the pool, so rather than each one having their own, I guess they decided to go for this joint project instead.
The interview that I saw talked about the problems that they had creating the pool – such as filtration. But the benefits are clear: not only can you swim in the pool, you can paddle canoes and dinghies in it and still not be taken away by the tide.
It should certainly put Algarrobo on the map.
I guess you could also ask: why not?
The World's largest swimming pool – in Chile
Frankfurt by train
Today the Monday Podcast combines two ideas. When I was younger, I used to enjoy going out for a day and just riding on trains in cities like London or Rotterdam. Now it was time to try this with my daughter in Frankfurt.
Secondly, I often read questions in forums about visiting Frankfurt for only a few hours, eg. between flights, and I wanted to see how much of Frankfurt it was possible to see using the trams and U-Bahn lines.
Listen to the podcast to hear where we went and what we saw:
(Press the “play” button to listen to the podcast)
The price of train tickets
Not just the price of food went up last year, travelling by train became more expensive from the middle of December, as the Tagesschau news reported.
The prices for tickets, bahncards and reservations rose, even the price of the “Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket” went up to 35EUR.
Deutsche Bahn have, however, added new destinations for the fast ICE trains, which may well be very useful for people wanting to travel around Europe, with the new connections to Paris, Vienna and Copenhagen.
People living in Germany who have a Bahncard and who travel around Europe may be able to make use of the RailPlus option – until now an optional (charged) extra, that according to the Tagesschau article is now included in the price of the Bahncard 50.
All these prices rises may not go down too well with travellers, who at the moment are suffering at the hands of the train drivers’ strikes that took place in the autumn of last year and may well be repeated in the early part of 2008 if talks break down again.
