Banya Experience

We had a fairly quiet day today - catching up on sleep etc. Eli, Heidi and I went for a walk this morning down to a local banya (hot pool / sauna etc) and cafe we had seen advertised. It was quite cold today - I think we were only getting a max of 3 or 5! But once you had been out for a while you adjusted and it didn’t feel so bad. We were disappointed to find the place locked up and nobody home. Guess they weren’t operating at the moment. Heidi enjoyed crunching in the snow on the way back. I stopped to stock up on our chocolate supplies on the way home. Ive lost track of how many blocks of chocolate we’ve consumed - they are smaller than the usual!

I think Heidi enjoyed having a more chilled day. I took her out to play in the sandpit and then she was running round inside playing with the few toys they had provided.

Eli rang the resort we had visited yesterday to see if we could go there this afternoon. We weren’t able to get in until about 5 as it would take a couple of hours to heat up the banya. We put Heidi down for a nap in the meanwhile.

The banya experience was fun. We had sole access to a small building which had a small eating area, toilet, shower and sauna with hot and cold pools outside. We changed into bathers and went outside to try the hot pool. We were a little disappointed to find it was not very warm - about 30 degrees which was just over lukewarm. We all hopped in eventually. I had been sitting on the bench feeling cold as I didn’t want to bother getting wet if it wasn’t that warm. But it was warmer than sitting out in the cold! Heidi had a great time jumping round in the ‘bath’.Then we made a dash for the hot shower to warm up. The others also went in and out the sauna while Heidi and I played around with the shower. The head came off and Heidi had fun showering everyone with it!

We did this for a couple of hours and then finished up feeling warm and toasty. The sun was setting so we made a drive down to the lake to get some photos. We arrived at the perfect time and managed to get some nice pics. We ventured onto the ice a little, however it wasn’t as firm here and although we were still on the sand, three of us ended up with a wet foot!

We drove back to the resort (we’d only gone 5 mins away) to have dinner. We were upstairs and as no one else was dining, we chose the table in a room off to the side with glass windows all around with a view of the lake. The lady tried to get us to sit inside the main area but we insisted we wanted the view. We came to regret our choice as the room was not heated and we slowly became colder and colder, especially having wet feet. We were all sitting there with our coats and beanies on! We felt bad at mucking up another table setting so decided to grin and bear it. The waitress didn’t speak a word of English and responded in Russian to everything we said so we were thankful for Kyria otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to make head or tail of what she said! The resort seemed to cater mainly for Russians as there were no english menus.

We ate quickly (well I tried to but I’m terribly slow - I just can’t chew as fast as other people!) so we could get back and warm up. It was late when we arrived back so we all made for bed.Read more