Well, we weren’t expecting this.
After a gorgeous day of hiking at the Plitvice Lakes National park, we were tired and a little sore. True we did not hike the more strenuous paths, but a good 5 miles and several hours later we are tired and happy to have the opportunity to relax at the pool/spa.
When we checked in at our hotel, which shall remain nameless, we were told we’d have free run of the spa services. Deciding to take full advantage — and sooth some aching muscles — we headed down there to see what was available to us. The brochure had mentioned a Hammam, several saunas and steam rooms and a whirlpools/hot tubes. After standing at the receptionist desk for a while with no one to answer our questions/ guide us through the rather large and secluded spa area so we decided to explore it ourselves. We found the hammam rather easily, but were disappointed in the lack of warmth in the relaxation pool and thus decided to move on. It wasn’t until 15 minutes into our exploration of the SPA area that we noticed something a little off.
The supposed “hot tubes” were lukewarm at best — which was a huge disappointment. But we also noticed a couple walking around “all natural.” We figured, ‘weird but it’s Europe and not shocked to see the rare person walking around nude' — until we noticed a running trend of people, mind you this is a coed SPA, in their birthday suits. Upon entering the meditation/relaxation lounge — which was just a number of queen sized mattresses on the floor — we found numerous people letting it all hang out. Being the super adult Americans that we are, we couldn’t stop giggling (apologies, we are just not used to this in the states). After a few more attempts at locating a sauna that was somewhat empty, we abandoned our hopes of finding a relaxing experience and left. Wasn’t until we left that we saw, on a small placard, that it was a nudist spa.