Yes, I’m back

It was super chillaxing! I really needed it! We got there on Friday after a 3 hour drive (it was way up in the north of Holland, in Groningen), checked into our hotel room, changed into our bathing suits, put on our hotel robes and slippers. Off we went!

The first stop: the thermal bath. The thermal bath is a pool in the open air. What’s great about the thermal bath is that it’s filled with 36 degrees Celcius water that’s rich in minerals like salt and magnesium. So it’s not only a very pleasant temperature, but it also has a beneficial effect to your health. It causes the blood vessels to widen, the blood-pressure to drop, the heartbeat to accelerate and the absorption of oxygen to increase. So your body detoxifies. Besides that, all the minerals in the water have their own specific effect on the body. Because of the high salt amount the body is almost like you’re floating in the water. This effect relieves the muscles and the joints. It’s super.

They advise you not to bathe longer than 30 minutes and to wait 5 hours until going in there again. Well, fuck that! In the three days we were at the resort, I was in the thermal bath for like 3 hours a day :D

The second stop was the sauna area. I’m not a sauna kinda girl, I get headaches like really fast and I don’t like seeing ugly naked people around me… But it went ok, I tried not to stay too long in each cabin. Besides the Finnish sauna’s of 95 (hot!) and 85 degrees Celcius, they also had a infra-red sauna and a Turkish steam-bath. Perfect for people like me who don’t like extreme heats.

The third stop were the very pleasant bubble-baths and the Balneo bath of 32 degrees Celsius with jet stream.
In the sauna area there was also a warm foot-bath (this didn’t appeal to me at all!), a cold plunge-bath (crazy Europeans!) and a sauna-garden (too bad it’s not summer yet!). One of the best things was the scrub-salt corner. I was scrubbing my naked body like there was no tomorrow! It was great

The fourth stop was the lavender-room. I love aromatherapy and especially lavender. The setup in the room was pretty cool too. There had hot lava rocks in a bucket above a fireplace and every 15 minutes it would automatically drop into lavender water, resulting into lavender steam. Hmmm…you can put me back in that room any time!

The fifth stop was the beauty salon. I had a facial and it was wonderful! I really should have that more often. Like once a month or something…

Overall the place was great! Very quiet, very relaxing. The food by the way was wonderful. In the morning we were provided with the breakfast buffet (I absolutely love fresh orange juice and little croisants), in the afternoon we had big sandwiches and in the evening we ate in the hotel restaurant (the menu was fancy, but not all that big, but it was good).

Comfortable reclining-chairs all over the place, lots of tea, soothing music, delicious scents…hmmm…can I go back? I don’t think 3 days was enough…