3 years

For our wedding anniversary I got those two cure mugs by my favourite chalk artist and his book from my husband.

This year we decided to spend the anniversary weekend in Pärnu and booked a room in Hedon SPA. Overlooking the snow covered beach. Right before leaving we went to our terrace and built an Angry Bird and Nikita, who remained there waiting for us.

For the first night we had reservations to restaurant Raimond. The menu sounded absolutely delicious and we were pretty excited. It did appear that most of the effort had gone into presentation and less into seasoning. We were not impressed.

Considering that it was winter and even though most of the years you can't really tell winter form summer and can swim the year round, this winter is cold and snowy, we decided against beach time and had booked the Silent SPA in Hedon. It was basically two hour bliss in the old mud treatment place - we soaked in little pool with salt water, relaxed and had facials.

Dinner in the second, less fine dine restaurant in the hotel was much more delightful and we left with a few additional pounds.

Relax a la Laulasmaa

As of Friday we were married for two years already and to celebrate the paper anniversary the most suitable option would be written, like write a love letter for your spouse. Further appropriate presents would have been book, calendar, painting, photo album, family chronicle, tickets to theater, cinema or some other event, magazine subscription, puzzle, flights for two. We thought better to not traumatize each other with self drawn pictures and there's no space for a puzzle, so we booked a room in Laulasmaa to spend a relaxing weekend there in saunas and pools and enjoying some treatments while spending the rest of the time reading books.

We got out of town on Friday right before the rush hour and made it to our balcony just in time for the sunset. Changed and walked to the water park to spend the hour before dinner lazying in pools and saunas. We checked out the steam sauna, pine cone sauna and few more. I also introduced Scott the outside pool, which he considered too cold.

Dinner was planned in Wicca, which already few years has been among the 50 best restaurants in Estonia. Among warm pork jelly and sweet soup of lamb milk we also found something less extreme and more suitable for us and ordered elk and chantarelle tartar, selection of cheese and Baltic herring for starters, lamb tenderloin and fried pike perch for mains and black currant cake for dessert. When the server came to refill our champagne flutes, my ever so talkative husband informed him that we are celebrating our anniversary and the server got us the first round on him. Pays off to be chatty, I guess. Food was amazing - elk tender, lamb and fish juicy and the black currant cake added a nice and light touch to the end of the meal.

On Saturday we could watch the sunrise from bed and to make the best out of a great weather we went for a walk on the beach after breakfast. Couldn't make it very long, because already at 1pm we had our first treatments - massages and salt cave planned. Right after that we also returned to the water park and saunas. Since we had picked our favourites yesterday, we beelined right to salt and steam sauna and the pine cone sauna. While going to the pools, Scott discovered the Finnish sauna outside and we also checked that one out. When I got into outside pool after the Finnish sauna, he first had that daring look on his face like "Yeah, right, you'll go..." and after he followed me to the pool, the next stage was that I was lazying in the jaccuzi and Scott was still going from sauna to pool and back. I told him that once we have snow in winter again, he can do that in our lakehouse with sauna and snow.

For dinner we chose Verde today. The menu was not as fancy as in Wicca next door (no beer foam for dessert), but then again, everything seemed delicious (we didn't have to find our way through warm pork jelly). We chose marinated catfish and beef carpaccio for the starters, duck salad and corn chicken for mains and Vana Tallinn Creme Brulee and raspberry cottage cheese patties for dessert. So good!

At 10pm we fell into the bed and imagined sleeping until 9am and then, all well rested go and have some breakfast. Well, guess again. At 6am I woke up on a fire alarm and panicked husband. I opened the door and since there didn't seem to be any smoke, we didn't evacuate. Five minutes later the alarm was shut off. And... merely 10 minutes later it went off again. It seemed that also people from beach residence had gotten out now. I put on my boots to go down to the reception to see, if there is the situation "Save yourself, who can!". Also from other rooms, families made their way down, everyone fully dressed to face the January weather. Because you shouldn't catch a cold in January weather while escaping from a burning building. From the reception guests were sent back to the rooms, apparently it was an automatic alarm. Back in the room, we had to listen to the third alarm and after that it remained quiet.

Around 9am we made our way to the breakfast. Scott had done a great research and planning yesterday and knew exactly, what kind of gigantic sandwich he's going to make himself. Out of half a loaf of ciabatta, bacon, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, salami and mustard he created a sandwich worth getting a full page in the Guiness Book of Records.

We had hot parafin treatments booked, got silky smooth feet and hands and were ready to go home. On Friday, when picking up the car from the rental, we saw on the paper that we got a Mazda. You can imagine our surprise on Sunday when it was a Peugeot in the hotel parking lot that peeped and no Mazda within sight.

Croatia Full of Life. Wine and Views

Our apartment in Dubrovnik had a balcony, but rather small and instead of the sea we could have watched our own wall. So, mostly we were sitting on the big terrace overlooking the Adriatic sea. Since the entrance to the landlords apartment was from the same terrace, I think, we were supposed to use our own tiny little balcony. But since they didn't tell us to leave, we were mostly sitting there with our morning coffee or late night glass of wine. Like today morning. I had just set my coffee and yogurt on the table and opened the chats in my phone, when the door opened and the landlord looked out. He said Hi and went back in, where he had a rather heated discussion with his wife. I imagined it going down something like: "Damn, here they are again, occupying our terrace, like their apartment wouldn't have one! Oh, well, let it be, at least they'll leave today. But in the future we will have a sign, so other arrogant guests wouldn't have their picnics here in front of our door!" And then... a minute later, the landlord came out again, holding a bottle of really nice white wine and gave it to as as a gift. And went to the dentist with his wife.

Although we were happy about the wine, but travelling with hand luggage only and still somewhat tired from yesterday, it didn't seem likely to be able to finish the wine before leaving to airport in an hour. So, when we went out to get the bus tickets for the airport shuttle, we also used the chance to make the lovely girl behind the counter happy by giving the wine to her :)