Different kinds of pirts

Weekly pirts (Latvians saunas) have become part of our lives now that we are living in Sigulda. My skin has never felt so great! There is no normal-sounding way to translate it, but what makes it so great, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, is once you get good and sweaty you get "beaten" with a small "broom", the standard is one made of birch branches. It sounds weird, but it really stimulates your blood flow, helps clean out all your toxins, acts like aromatherapy and is even like a little massage. It really is wonderful.

A while ago we bought a great book all about pirts, so now we have been experimenting with many different kinds of "brooms". Typically you use brooms that have been dried out, but this time of year it's especially great to use fresh ones. So two weeks ago we did a pirts with cherry blossom branches that were in bloom. This weekend we did one with lilacs. Each type of branch is of course meant to help your body in different ways (both with through the scents you breathe in and the healing qualities of the leaves). So here you can see IG and I getting the brooms ready with lilacs from our garden. They smelled divine.A bit of a rainwater flinging fight followed... :)
And Mims the Wondercat of course does not join us in pirts (though she likes creeping around in the sauna when it's dark during the week), but she does a good job of keeping clean anyway. :)