2 August 2024
Knowing how crowded Parisian pools are, I actively sought out 33M or 50M pools when I was in town for the first week of the 2024 Olympics. The Piscine Georges Drigny was the closest to our excellent Airbnb near Montemarte, but I only went there the morning we had tickets for an all-day Athletics session at Stade de France for Athletics ...
... because the 7am opening time meant I could at least get in a 2,000-meter swim.
Though I walked the ~15 minutes there and didn't take the Metro, I did delight in one of the classic Metro signs en route ... and then was a little worried about the structural integrity of the building and the safety of the subterranean pool when I saw the entire block in which the pool is housed was shrouded in strong netting, I guess, to catch pieces falling onto the street?
(Scenes en-route, click to enlarge pictures)
Like most municipally-run pools, the 7am opening time meant that the attendant waited behind the gate from about 6:55am, watched the line of swimmers build and only opened the door when her clock precisely hit 7am, meaning I wasn't in the water until about 7:10am, both as I had to change into my suit and then wait in a secondary line for each of us to enter our "secret codes" into their free locker system:
This locker system is good, as it saves you having to remember random coins or a lock, but it does mean you have to pay attention to which locker you actually used. I had a brief moment of panic during my swim when I feared I had not locked the locker number into my (occassionally forgetful) memory bank.
Despite reading some negative Google reviews around both the crowds and the cleanliness, I found this 6 lane pool and the entire facility to be quite clean, with crisp water and only 2-3 other swimmers per lane, making for a pleasant wake-up swim:
I'd still opt for a 50 meter pool in Paris, particularly the Alice Milliat pool I had swum in the day before (#693) or the incredible Annette K. barge pool (which will be described in my next post), but this is certainly functional in a pinch.
And, because I had set my expectations low, I emerged from underground delighted with the start to my day.
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