Five Star Swimming Pools

I've been rating swimming pools for many years and I think these are the best ever.

Our usual pool is for adults only, a very large square with several waterfalls. There are lounge chairs around the perimeter, mostly in the sun, but by the time we get to the pool later in the afternoon there's a little shade from the beach umbrellas and the trees that surround the pool area. The water is usually a little cooler that the torrid air, but today it felt like bathwater so we tried the other large, rectangular pool a few feet away.

We had avoided the "kids'" pool until today, but it was, in fact, almost empty and the water was much cooler and more refreshing. Water spills out of this pool down five or six wide steps, down to a small square pool that we had assumed was a wading pool. Not so. Like the other pools, it is five feet deep -- dangerous for young children, of course, but just great for people like me who swim a couple of strokes across the length of most hotel pools before hitting the wall.

The only other pool away from home I remember enjoying this much was at a KOA in South Dakota many years ago. The late August evenings were very cold, and the water in the KOA cool was steaming hot. It felt like a spa under the stars before bed in the old Coachmen motorhome. The Las Brisas pools are spa-like for the opposite reason, cooling us off after slogging through the heat all afternoon. Doesn't get much better than this.