A few years ago I was watching the Bachelorette (Desiree’s season – in case anyone was interested) and she along with two guys went on a date in a hot tub in the middle of a lake. I thought that was the coolest thing. Once we moved here I remembered that episode. I looked it up and saw they had one in Switzerland, the Netherlands, England and Finland. I kind of forgot about it until a few months ago when our friends John and Trudy went to the Netherlands for a soccer game. They mentioned seeing a hot tub in the canals. I immediately jumped in asking “do you mean the hottug?” From there I “convinced” John, Trudy, Shawn and Amy to do it with us. I booked it for November.

This past weekend we finally got to try out the HotTug. We got into Rotterdam around 11am. We walked around the center for a while eating at an inside food market for lunch. Around 1:30pm we headed over to Vessel 11 (a huge red boat that serves as a bar/restaurant) where our hottuging experience started. None of us really knew what to expect. We signed a few papers, got a map, some instructions, picked out the alcohol we wanted to drink and changed into our suits. Then we were off.

The HotTug is a pretty neat invention as it’s heated by a wood burning stove that was sitting directly in the water complete with its own collapsible chimney, electric motor and of course, beverage holders! Shawn was our driver, John was the fireman and Alex was the one who put the chimney down when we went under bridges (a very important job 😉) . For the next two hours we slowly floated along the Rotterdam canals sitting in a hot tub, drinking beer and wine. We were a bit of a spectacle. People walking along the canals took pictures of us and shouted “are you cold?!” We were sitting in a 105 degree hot tub and it was 48 degrees outside, I think they were the ones who were cold. At one point in our two hour journey, the tides came in. We were heading back to the starting point when we noticed the water looked a lot higher under some of the bridges then when we had passed through the first time. We cleared the first two bridges without an issue but when we came up to the last one we needed to go under, panic set in as we weren’t sure we were going to make it! We had to very, very slowly make our way under, careful not to hit the chimney, the light on the back or our heads on the bottom of the bridge. With some strategic weight shifting and careful hand placement, we slowly made it under the bridge. A few minutes longer and we would have been trapped on the other side for a few hours. Definitely made for an interesting event. When we mentioned it to the HotTug employee, he seemed surprised. It must not happen very often.

The two hours flew by and we were all sad to get out of the HotTug. But we had such a fun time! It’s not every day you get to sit in a hot tub in the middle of the Netherlands canals. We might have to do it again someday!

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