Swimming at Holiday World, Benalmadina!

Oh boy did those baby swimming lessons pay off...Thomas was fearless *and* perfectly safe, he backed carefully into the water and held onto the edge (where appropriate) and behaved with total confidence, when asked what he wanted to do each morning he practically yelled the roof off the apartamento with his enthusiasm for the "SWWMMMMMMMNN POOOOL!!!!!!!!!"...over on our side of the road there were two large pools, one a shallow toddler splashing pool (which the kids could merrily run in and out of)-

- and the other a bigger, deeper pool for proper swimming -

- this is where we typically started our day, collecting (complimentary) towels from the life guard (although there was a deposit of 15 euros to worry about if you accidentally lost one, so we were quite careful)-

- and then across the bridge (which was, admittedly, a bit of a struggle with a loaded down pushchair) was the other part of the resort, which I can only refer to as a fully fledged water park...just amazing...

There were (I think) 6 pools across there, this one was the one by the spa (up on top in the middle of the ruins), this pool had a large pirate ship with stairs and a slide into the water (of which, inexplicably, I don't appear to have a better picture of), the middle pool (where we normally hung out until lunch time) was another paddling pool (which featured a lot of spraying elephants)-

- then there was a panoramic pool with glass walls looking out to sea, next to the rubber ring ride-

- a dark and spooky underground crash pool, and a wave pool right at the bottom with water guns (etc)...

At the top of the park (by the lunch restaurant) there was a large number of water fountains (that kept Thomas busy by swapping round all the time)-

-the volcano pool-

- and two other smaller pools around by the bar-

-which Thomas kept going back to (on his own) asking for Gelato (roughly Ice Cream)... ;)

There was also an amazing tree house and a fake lighthouse -

- to explore if all the water became too much... ;) And so we pretty much (blissfully) spent our days, breakfast, first two swimming pools, over the bridge, bottom three swimming pools, lunch, top couple of swimming pools, then back across the road for tea! Maybe stopping at the buffet for some ice cold melon and spicy chicken wings... ;)