I was one step away from bringing my swimsuit with me to splash around in the pool between the two buildings.
Well, I would have taken it for sure if I hadn’t been disappointed by the information that said, “You’re not allowed, ma’am, to come and throw your flamingo floatie in our pool”…
Only the residents of the two buildings and their guests have access to the pool. So, if you know someone who lives there, let me know so I can befriend him/her.
EMBASSY GARDENS SKY POOL
I took the subway (Northern Line) to Nine Elms. Then, with Google Maps in hand, I walked among some really cool houses, passed under a railway line, and arrived in front of the American embassy.
What an interesting building! I went inside to ask if it really was the embassy because it seemed so different from what we have in Bucharest. “Yes, yes, this is the US embassy”, confirmed a policewoman from inside.
As I turned around, I laid eyes on the pool that I had been searching for all this way.
Wow! How cool!
I think it’s amazing to swim in a transparent pool through the bottom of which you can see your neighbors walking their children or pets.
I stood there like a fool, admiring, measuring, and analyzing it, and then I started a flurry of photos and videos (the people from the embassy surely had all their cameras on me…).
I tried to find out as much as I could about it.
It’s a pool located 35 meters above the ground!
It connects two residential buildings. Luxury buildings, I’d say. I found apartments for sale in the two buildings: a two-bedroom apartment costs over 1 million pounds!
Hold on, don’t rush, they have plenty!
The pool is built from transparent acrylic. Its side walls are 180 mm thick, and the maximum depth is 3.2 meters.
It’s a semi-Olympic pool – it’s 25 meters long, with 14 meters being suspended, providing a thrilling experience. The remaining part is integrated into the roofs of the two residential blocks.
I picture the residents having conversations like, “Hey neighbor from across the pool, I’m swimming over to you, could you give me some flour? My wife ran out and wants to make doughnuts”.
Or maybe, “Hey Raj’s mom, will you let Raj swim over to me so we can play Minecraft?”
But then, my imagination is shattered by reality: there’s a walkway parallel to the pool (as seen in the photo), so you can walk over to your neighbors.
I read an interesting detail: residents of the two buildings want to close the pool during winter because heating it is too costly (reportedly 450 pounds per day!), and it doesn’t reach a comfortable swimming temperature. One resident even joked to The Sun, “Basically, we’re heating up the sky” haha.
An official mentioned that they maintain a constant water temperature of 30 degrees, which I think is pretty boiled… And I believe I would have seen some steam coming out of it, considering how cold it was outside.
While I was there, on a day in February with temperatures around 10 degrees Celsius, no residents-enthusiastic-swimmers showed up. I’ll try again in the summer.
Until then, you can see the place filmed by me with enthusiasm and with a neck pain:
