It was rather low key day with only one treatment a floating experience that I'm not sure I'd every want to do again. The man brought me into this room right off the pool and in there was a huge baby blue plastic egg shaped contraption and the man popped open the lid and basically you crawl in to this well of heavily saturated salt water and you float there for 30 minutes. I had him leave the pods flap partly open because it was just too claustrophobic otherwise. And I must admit that all of my muscle aches disappeared even the persist neck/pain pains from dragging around luggage and traveling from city to city up and down stairs and over cobble-stoned streets. And even now, hours later my back/neck and pretty much my whole body feels great. I just didn't enjoy being in the pod. I think if I was floating out in a big pool of warm salt water and I could see people that would be better.
After treatments it was great to stretch in the pool and exercise some and then do a sauna and steam. I also had time to visit the lobby gallery in the green house which is another building attached to ours by an underground tunnel. The exhibit is by Russian artist Jarmila Koubova who works primarily with tapestry pieces that from a distance looked like paintings and only when I got close enough did I see the intricate woven tread details. The piece I took a picture of is called "Nadeje" or "Hope" in English. She also created a wonderful piece that consists of a large board where she placed small pieces of paper in rows, each paper representing a butterfly and on each paper is written is a Russian word with the translation in English below. The topic of the piece which is printed (also with a English translation) at the top and reads "Rare and Vanishing Species." What makes this so wonderful is that these rare and vanishing species she refers to are qualities we most respect in people and qualities that are sadly vanishing in some like humbleness, adherence, diligence, fairness, decency, accountability, modesty, helpfulness, etc. I think it would be an interesting project for an artist to take this same idea and in the place of the slips of papers with words represent the qualities in a visual way. It was a nice surprise to have an impressive exhibit right here in the lobby.
And then if was off to dinner in town to the Grand Hotel Pupp where they have an amazingly reasonable dinner menu. It's usually a buffet but since there are so few guests staying there they let you choose from a pretty substantial menu and they brought the dishes to the table but kept it at the buffet price which was great. I had a yummy salad with blue cheese chunks, pairs and nuts, a veggie soup, wiener schnitzel and their special Pupp cake which was a yellow sponge cake with a fruit nut filling and a think chocolate glaze. It was so nice to have dinner there and even sit in the same room where they filmed the dinner scenes in the movie "Last Holiday."
And as an added note: I was sitting in the lobby doing the blog and a group with one very adorable man and 3 40-something women sat down and were chatting loudly. The man who was wearing his bathrobe and a baseball cap and a days worth of stubble on his face turned to me and asked where I was from and they all got a little excited when I mentioned New York City and then he told us about them being from Amsterdam but originally from Russia and that he's Jewish and was a professional dancer until about 20 years ago when he retired. He's a lover of beauty now and collects art and even owns an original Rembrandt. His mother is a plastic surgeon in Amsterdam and his father is a doctor in Israel. He was just so animated and happy to chat while the three women he is traveling with chatted to each other and this other Russian man who came over. The robed man is named Igor and is I think he said 55 and he travels a lot with these women they just went to Dubai and they're off to Barcelona when they get back to Amsterdam. It's just s funny who you'll meet when you're sitting in a hotel lobby and it does help to be from NYC because most people get excited about that. If I said I was from Nebraska or Arkansas I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get so much interest.
