A week at the summer cottage

After our trip to Tallinn on the 15th of August it was time to pack for our yearly cottage holiday. This year my parents had booked a week in a cottage in Valkeala, so it was a new place for us. Francesca's flight back to Rome was early in the morning two days after we arrived to the cottage and we couldn't get ourselves and all our staff into one car to get to the cottage, so I went there with the girls first and after having taken Francesca to the airport, I went to get my parents.
Considering what kind of weather it had been in Finland all summer, we were incredibly lucky. It was sunny all the time and the water in the lake slowly got acceptably warm to swim in. We had a swim every day from the sauna anyway.
The cottage was called "Tehtaanpuisto", which means mill park, because in the area there had once been a mill and the houses around it used to be the factory worker's homes. The garden was really big with big trees and a big lawn. There was a walk down to the lake where there was a sauna with a stove that was really easy to warm up once you learned how to do it. Also the cottage was big and spacious.
Of course we compared it to the cottage where we had been going for four years now and there were some things we missed from there. I missed the lovely sunsets and the view over the sea from the cottage, the girls missed the jetty to jump from and we missed the terrace where you could sit and have breakfast or eat in the evening, although it was a bit narrow. We also missed the woods just outside the cottage where you could pick blueberries.
The pros were the grocery store at a walking distance with a bar and a small post office, where my parents had ordered our newspaper to be sent, the sauna that was easy to warm up and very near the lake, so it was easy to have a quick swim from the sauna, even when the water and the outside air weren't so warm, enough space inside the cottage and the dartboard outside. There was a place to go horse riding just 2 km from the cottage and there you could also stop to pick blueberries.
They could have provided something to play with in the garden and maybe a garden swing that most gardens in the countryside in Finland have and a table and chairs to sit and have your morning coffee a bit closer to the cottage. Now you had to walk to the grill place, which was a bit too far away. There was a lot of space in the garden, but not so much to do there actually. We did find some raspberries and red currants to pick there and in the end of our holiday I picked some and made a pie of them at home.
Anyway our holiday was really nice and relaxing and we were so happy to have had a week of lovely weather.
We had a sauna and a swim every day, went out rowing a few times, played lots of cards, had barbeque evenings, sat out in the garden and made a drawing of the cottage, read magazines and books, threw darts, picked blueberries and made a blueberry pie and once we also went horse riding. I had a morning swim a few times after having gone out for a walk/run. The first nights were very cold - when I took Francesca to the airport at 5 o'clock in the morning it only was 6 degrees. But then the nights got warmer, so the last night when we had our barbeque in the garden we were able to sit there until it got dark. Only the mosquitoes disturbed us, so my father went in to the cottage as soon as he had eaten his sausage.

Here's a collage for each day at the cottage.

Day 1

 

Day 2

Day 3

 

Day 4

 

Day 5