The next morning we were at the Radisson Blu by 11am for our spa day. Little did we know how much of a day it would be!
On the booking for our spa treatments was a line about showing up an hour in advance to take advantage of the Thermal Suite and Relaxation Area. It meant a whole floor devoted to DIY relaxation: eucalyptus scented steam rooms; saunas; heated glass tile benches; an outdoor "vitality pool" (yes, OUTDOOR. It was heated. Super cool); a "shower experience", basically a sort of trail you can walk through where the showers vary from cool to hot, from a rainforest type overhead to an all-over 6-nozzle dealio; male and female relaxation room with these Posturpedic type beds, cozy with terry cloth "sheets" and blankets over them, soft music and dim lights, and headphones you can plug into each bed/chair's own listening station; and a sort of common room with fruit, tea and water to snack on.
I didn't bring my camera up there, but here's some photos from the espa web site:
(top) This is the outdoor vitality pool. It has a couple of waterfalls that you can see to the right, and one whole side is benchlike and jacuzzi type bubbles blow through that way.
(bottom) this is the "experience shower" trail.
But I get ahead of myself.
We check in for our treatments, ditch our coats in the cloakroom, and are shown to the changing rooms where we are each handed a towel, robe, and slippers. These slippers are real; I think the soles are cork or something similar, whatever Birkenstock uses. The lockers are in 2 sizes, decent and enormous. We each chose enormous because why not? In the changing room in addition to the normal bathroom, showers with aromatherapy shampoo and body wash and hair dryers, are a bathing suit centrifuge, light-up makeup mirrors and
flat irons.
Quickly changing into our bathing suits and wearing our robes we head up to relax. Although we didn't get into
every steam room or sauna, we hit one of everything that place had to offer. We were chatting and sipping tea when our spa professionals came to fetch us. When I got to the room, it had all the expected: soft lighting and music, aromatherapy wafting in the air. The lady gave me a plastic bag for the bathing suit and a pair of disposable panties to wear and said to change and get under the covers. The massage table thing had what looked just like sheets made of terry cloth, with a cozy blanket thrown over it. We had wondered how comfortable our relaxation would be in wet bathing suits as we go straight from the water relaxation to the treatment - and this was the answer. They think of everything!
The facial turned out to be facial/scalp massage and hair treatment/shoulder and neck massage. When she said it was over I had to gather the energy to get up. Next was the post-treatment relaxation room, which came equipped with more of the lounge chair - Posturpedic bed things with terrycloth sheets and blankets, plus tea, water, dried fruit, nuts and adorable little cookies we decided had to be healthy because they wouldn't serve anything else. The 3 of us had the room to ourselves so we chatted, rested, ate and drank.
After about an hour of that we decided it was time to move on to the next thing. It just so happens the Radisson Blu houses the Skyline Bar, with famous panoramic views of Riga. It was lunchtime for us so we went for some food and drink and pretty views.
And as we chatted and looked around and ate and drank and drank some
more, we decided we had made a mistake not picking up a table right by
the window, so we had to move.
We saw the sun set.
We got comfortable.
And, at 10:23pm my friend remembered that our coats were still at the coat check at the spa.
As I am normally the speedy one in the family I volunteered to race down there to fetch our coats or get someone in the hotel management to open the door as we assumed the spa was long closed. Turns out it closes at 10:30pm. I did have to wait about 5 minutes for someone with a key to come by, but we didn't have to take a cab home in our sweaters so I call it a win.
The first 3 days of our 5 day weekend were largely consumed with chores. There were too many things that absolutely had to be done before I left next week. We got outside every day, but the outings were largely brief and close (major exception being shashlik ... it was important to me to do that one last time, and there's still a chance we might go one last, last time).
Today the sun was shining, and I just had to get out. I suggested we metro to Gorkovskaya and see if we could find the miniature replicas of the major buildings in Piter that's supposed to be behind the metro. If not, there's always Peter and Paul Fortress, the Artilliary Museum or the zoo. The kids love riding the metro, it could be an outing all on its own. So we threw some things into a bag and off we went. It is remarkably freeing to go out with the family with no stroller and everything we need fits into a large purse. As that was packed, however, I took my leather backpack.
I hadn't realized it was actually a miniature of the city. Shiny, polished marble represents the rivers and canals. Grassy areas are parks and a couple of the major ones, like the Summer Garden, had its polished marble "pond" laid out. The buildings are where they are supposed to be. We read an article a couple of months ago about how this was a gift to the city but the city never did anything about it and vandalism was destroying the place. Today everything was cleaned up, if Spilled Blood lacked color, and a gentleman with a megaphone kept anyone from touching the displays. Or rather, he yelled at everyone as they touched the displays.
It was warm enough to be without jackets in the sun. The kids had the best time running around town. Zoltan even got on his belly to "swim" in the Neva. We got lunch in a nearby cafe and home in time for nap only a little late.
