Bubbly mineral baths -- date night?

So this is Baden (bath-town) after all and we finally made it to the public baths, ThermalBaden. The town gives tickets when you register and we put them to good use last night. You go in and change into your bathing suit -- the woman thought I was funny asking if a bikini was ok. Yes, bikinis were the thing, judging by all the teen biscuits there with their beaus. No nudity or prudery at this one.

Once you change and shower down, you enter a beautiful room with lots of cream tile and wooden beams, panes of glass and skylights around a pool with candles in lanterns scattered around the edges. It was neither too big nor too small, but aesthetically just right. And when you step in, ahhhhh, the temperature was not too hot, not too cool, perfectly warm. In one part there were places to lie with mini jets massaging you all over. All around the edges were jets of water at different levels. And at one end was a big bubbly blob that we didn't even get to. No, it doesn't take long to get used to this.

After a while in that pool, we decided it was time to try the next stop, the OUTDOOR pool. Now mind you, I'd been in every layer of every wintry thing I owned to walk down there, and here I was in a bikini, heading outside. But of course they had thought it all out (these are Roman baths after all, so they'd had some time to work out the details -- ok no, not actually the building). You walked into a separate room where the steps to the pool were, with a plastic curtain over it, so you could dive underneath and come out into -- more perfectly warm water, cold air around your head, a Christmas tree and twinkly lights on the houses across the river going up the hill, and STEAM. The steam covered the whole area and kept everything mysterious. We tried every area, enjoying the night view from different angles, and the purply-deep pink sky, including the big bubbly blob here -- you have to wait your couple's turn. It was like a whirlpool built in the pool with round tile sides and rails to hold onto, otherwise I would have been swept out to pool. And the steam was thickest here. I didn't take any pictures because of the being wet and all, but the picture above is from the website, http://www.thermalbaden.ch/.

Come on over, the water's fine!