Rheinfelden Spa

A friend of mine wanted to treat me to a trip to the Rheinfelden Spa as an early Christmas present. It was a beautiful day for the excursion, sunny and chilly with bright blue skies. I have never been to a spa before, so wasn't sure what to expect, and I was pleasantly surprised. The facilities seem pretty modern and very well kept up, and it wasn't very crowded on this weekday. You do wear a bathing suit, though apparently there are spas in Germany where you can go au naturel. The price is very reasonable, 19CHF for an hour and a half.

There is a big indoor pool that has jets of water along the sides to massage points starting at your feet and up your legs and back. Then you can go to the outdoor pool where there are areas to recline against bubbling jets of water, or sit under very forcefully falling waterfalls to massage your head and shoulders. In the center of the outdoor pool is a whirlpool where the jets propel you around the circle, and inside that is an area where the jets come up from the floor and you can lay out along them so they hit your back, legs or feet.

When you have had your fill of massaging water jets, you can go to a number of saunas, they have both Finnish saunas, where the humidity is very low and the temperature is very high, or you can go into a humid sauna with moderate temperature and very high humidity. We went into only the humid sauna, and made it through about 5-10 minutes. I think it can get dangerous to stay in those for much longer. It was very good for my sinuses though. After a dip in a massage tub that was right outside the sauna for a gentle bubbly massage, we headed to the showers and rinsed off and headed out with only a couple of minutes to spare.

Since it was lunchtime, we headed out into the town to find a place to eat, and then wandered around a bit to walk off the lunch. All in all a very pleasant and relaxing day.

A view up the Rhein.






An old abandoned building, possibly a hotel, that we could see from the spa pools. It stands right on the bank of the Rhein River, which is on the left of this photo, and the spa is to the right.



This old ruined tower also stands on the bank of the Rhein River.







Another tower with a stork's nest.


This is an old building we saw that may or may not have been in the very beginning process of being renovated, it was very hard to tell if it was. You can see in the left window a model goat. Apparently there is a story of a goat saving the town from a fire long ago. In searching for more about the story of the goat, I happened upon this odd little ghost story that takes place in Rheinfelden. I have no idea if it is based on any historical facts, but the descriptions of the area are very good.