Joy in a shower

One of the things that I relish most on my trips are taking showers.  After a long haul flight especially!  Whether at a hotel, an airport, or at home.  There's nothing like "starting over" and starting fresh after soaking in a warm (or cold if you are in a very hot place!) shower.  I seriously feel like a new person.

















Schipol airport Amsterdam.  For 15 euro (a bit less than $20 these days) you can shower in the bank of showers operated by the in-airport Mercure Hotel.  Seriously the best $20 I ever spend on a trip.  You leave Dar es Salaam at 11:30 p.m. after sweating through check-in and boarding in the less than cool- though semi-air-conditioned- airport terminal.  You sleep, usually not well, on the 9 hour flight, and arrive in Amsterdam around 7 a.m. usually a zombie and dressed for an alternate climate (when I left Dar I was wearing a tank top and flip flops and arrived to 4 degrees Celsius in Holland!- about 39 degrees F).


With a swipe of your credit card, you are off to bliss.  20 minutes and you're brand new.  Almost like I washed away the stress of the last two weeks of work!  Washed away some of the tiredness and fatigue and with a new change of clothes and brush of your teeth, you are ready to face all the glories of duty-free and forge ahead on your journey.

I have a distinct memory of when I lived in the Dominican Republic for a summer during college on a study/research abroad trip.  We spent the weekend living in the campo campo campo (middle of nowhere bush).   Three other students and I "bathed" in the ocean that weekend as we had neither running water nor electricity in our little "shack". We sweat so much during that weekend and even on the ride home- riding in the bed of a truck into town to catch a bus (which was probably not well air-conditioned) and then took carro-publicos (basically cheap shared public cabs) from the bus station home covered in grime, sweat and dust.  And there was NOTHING better than hopping into the shower at my host family's house (with the "light switch" and outlet right near the shower head to flip on the hot water)...and coming out clean, strong, and new.

Today I'm grateful for clean water, the shower rooms at Mercure and other hotels and places I've rested my head, and for how renewing and refreshing such a simple thing can be.