For the first time in a while, I had a bad swim in Paris. Even by parisian standard some of the swimmers I encountered during my visit to Piscine de la Cour des Lions were exceptionally ruthless and rude. And that´s saying something. Just one thing: If you wanna hit something, go boxing. Swimming means neither punching the water as hard as you can, nor your fellow swimmers when they get in your way (or rather, you get in their way because your water-punching swim-technique means you are quite slow). The lifeguards will be happy to teach you a proper swimming technique - or recommend you a gym to train martial arts.
But that´s not the pools fault and may also not be representative as to how it normally is at Piscine de la Cour des Lions. As with so many things, it only takes a couple of Idiots to spoil something for everyone.
Piscine de la Cour des Lions is quite an decent pool overall. I quite liked the 1980ies Style it has going on - inside and out. I liked the pool hall. Big windows on two sides, mostly white walls and thanks to that not dark at all. The Basin itself (25x15 Meters) is in very good shape but the Water was quite dirty when I was there. Lanes are assigned to certain swimming speeds, but of course not everyone knows in which of the three categories they belong. Especially if you use the water-punching technique - it seems to be hard to realize that lots of noise and big splashes don´t equal speed. ;)
Where things aren't that pretty, are the showers and the changing rooms. I recon those have been redone a decade or so, but they still let the sight down due to poor maintenance. Only a couple of years and the showers and cabins will have do be redone again.
Cleanliness was alright when I was there.
Other negatives? They opened 15 minutes late and even then were still not in a hurry to open. The counter for people inside of the pool started at -8 (which means the counter doesn't show the correct number). Maximum Occupancy is 325 People, I already had a bad time with 60 people (according to the number on the broken counter) in there. If that counter shows three digits, I would advise not to go to Piscine de la Cour des Lions. read more