Pool #690 - Piscine des Amiraux (Paris)

27 July 2024

The Swim in Paris plan from the mid-2010 period aimed to:

1. Improve and modernize Parisian swimming pools

2. Create new pools to meet demand, and

3. To improve the quality of the public service.

From my 4,026 meter swim in this 33-metre pool with Maia on the Saturday morning after the 2024 Olympic opening ceremonies ...

(click gallery above to see full-size pictures)

... I'll say they absolutely rocked their first goal with this pool tucked away in the 18th arrondissement.

The apartment block and pool date to the late 1920s, with the pool being inaugurated in 1930, renovated for the first time in the early 1980s, and most recently in 2017. Architecturally and visually, it's a gorgeous place ...

(click gallery above to see full-size pictures)

... with pristinely clean tiles and cool water. You cannot see it from either of the pictures, but there were lights inset to the tile on each lane line, maybe every five or so meters. If you click the first image above, you can also see the windows on the ceiling. I believe those are open to the sky and that the interior courtyard. of the surrounding apartments would look down to the top of the pool ceiling.

Accessing the pool is pretty easy: after purchasing your cheap entry ticket from the automated machine, you head upstairs and select an individual green changing cabin (see picture on the right above), which surround the pool on the upper two floors of the facility:

(click gallery above to see full-size pictures)

Just like my recent swim in Brussels, the changing cabin itself becomes your locker. All you have to do is remember your number and then find an attendant post-swim to unlock it. In my case, you also have to not confuse the attendant by standing in front of cabin 42 while telling her in your français merdique that you want locker "forty-twelve."

As for the swimming itself, this is Paris, so a bit of a hodgepodge. Since no one here seems to pay any attention to 'lane speed' signs when they do exist (even worse than in London in my experience), at least the management decided not to create the pretense that Parisian patrons could manage to self-sort by speed and all lanes were a free-for-all. I got luck enough with my lane mates that I was able to swim 2 x 2,013M straight swims, each a bit under thirty minutes, without hitting anyone or getting kicked or hit by anyone else. I do find both here and in London that a 33M or, even better, a 50M pool allows just enough room to generally swim around the other swimmers. But, there's no ability to do anything other than straight swimming. Forget trying to do any kind of a structured workout or sets. Maia, who swam in the lane next to me apparently was with a bunch of MMA style swimmers as she left the pool happy to have swum, but with many more bruises than she came in with.

Bruising aside, it was a great start to our father-daughter Olympic day. After swimming, we spent the rest of the day watching Olympic water polo in the afternoon and then the exciting first night of Olympic swimming finals!