A to Z Challenge - "W"

W - as in Water, Water Everywhere

Swimming Hole outside Hana, Maui

Thinking back - way back - I have always liked water. Swimming lessons at five until I resembled a little fish, spending hot summer days in the muddy river with my buddies (nobody worried), jumping off the high weir towers - you just had to be careful not to get sucked against the grates! It would have been too embarrassing to have the miller come out with his long rake to haul you out; a dripping, squealing little piglet already anticipating furious parents (millers always told on you).

Austria is dotted with beautiful lakes (some are run-offs from the glaciers), 

 Austria's larges lake - the water actually gets warm - Woerthersee with the little town of Maria Woerth.





The elegant Hotel Schloss Seefels (my grandmother insisted that it once belonged to our family - but was gambled away at the nearby famous casino!)
Bugger!

Vacations in Norfolk, GB (huge tides). Oh, I actually swam in Loch Ness; talk about freezing! In the South of France, I managed to save a little boy from drowning.
Swam in the Dnepr in Kiev on my way to Sochi (on the Black Sea).
In (then still) Leningrad, I only took a ferry across the icy Neva to visit the old Peter and Paul Fortress on the island (creepy dungeons - most are).
Bermuda, Caribbean, Tahiti - must I go on?

Only to wind up on a lake in Arkansa

(in a pantoon boat!)