Estonia Part 2

Robert managed to get 2 weeks off work so he joined us for the second half of the holiday. His mum also arrived 1 day later with rainstorms from Sweden. That's when the summer seemed to have ended - it was cold and poured down with non stop rain. Luckily in Rakvere like in every proper Estonian town these days they have opened a new water-centre and spa. We had already been there with the kids once before and now had a good option to spend an otherwise miserable day. Heli was reluctant at first and planned to sit and do her crosswords but luckily I managed to persuade her to bring the bathers anyway and of course she joined in when she saw it. The building has a nice nordic design and good layout. All the different pools are quite close to each other and the scale is not so huge that you would constantly loose some of the children. There is something for everyone - splash for babies, bubbles for grandmas, ocean waves for the adventureous and the big black tube for the fearless. Raoul had tryed to persuade me to go in it already the first time but I was too scared. So this time he went with Robert but he had overestimated his braveness and came out quite scared.
There is a huge sauna complex with something like 10 different kinds of saunas and we tryed them all. So all the kids are sauna experts now. (Funnily now after we came back they discovered the steam sauna here on the condo for the first time and insist on going in there. I have resisted so far.)
And of course there is a pirat themed cafe at the exit and of course you cannot miss it with 3 aspiring pirates after a 3-hour swim.
Later on the weather turned a little better so we had a tour of the area the next day - manor houses, old fishing village etc. The absolute highlight was our incredible mushroom-picking. We just stopped in the middle of a forest that to me looked like a place where there could be mushrooms and a few meters from the road stumbled over loads and loads. I don't know what they are called in English (pilvikud in Estonian), but they are edible and tasty. I have never seen so huge ones of that type that are so fresh and uneaten by worms. It took us maybe 15 minutes to fill a big basket and more. The mushrooms with fresh potatoes fed 10 of us and another 2 portions were left over. We had a repeat of that a few days later. All kids were so excited and became really skilled in finding them as well. At dinner time Raoul had finished his plate and asked for more "can I have some more of that fish please". Well - main thing is it tasted good.
There were also masses of wild blueberries but we were so occupied with the mushrooms that we didn't even start to pick those. Just enough so that everyone had a nice blue tongue.